Chomping it All Down

Suddenly, after weeks of refusing virtually any food, Noey is eating like a champ. Opening his mouth and asking for food. Saying please to his porridge. Cleaning out his bowl and asking for more. It's a complete and utter miracle.

Hmmm, you mean there's no more??

I've mentioned a few times how difficult he's been to feed. For weeks, even putting him in his highchair invovled a huge struggle. He would turn away and start clinging desperately to me and whining if I as much as touch his highchair and make attempts to move it in front of the dining table. Major distraction techniques had to be employed to get him to even sit in the chair, with us hoping to get him in a good enough mood that he might not notice us sneaking a spoonful of food into his mouth. It was highly stressful and I dreaded his mealtimes.

Then about a week and a half ago, his tooth -- the last of 3 that he was cutting at the same time -- pushed through. And suddenly, I have this hungry baby. Of course, the adjustments we made to his porridge probably helped as well. He now gets ikan bilis as well (soaked, dried and toasted by PoPo) and a teensy weensy bit of soya sauce. Makes a world of difference to the taste and he's lapping it all up.

On hindsight, I can't blame him for having no appetite over the last couple of months. It must have been pretty terrible for him to have so many teeth pushing through at the same time. Noey started teething pretty late with his first tooth making an appearance at 9.5 months, but since then, his teeth have been sprouting with a vengence. He's gone from no teeth to 8 teeth in 3 months. Ouch. Still, even though I knew it was probably his teeth that were bothering him, it still drove me crazy that he wasn't eating much at all.

Which make me wonder: Why didn't God just allow babies to be born with teeth?? Obviously this is something I, the one WITHOUT the infinite wisdom, cannot answer.

In the meantime, I'm just praying that we're given a good long break for now before he start sprouting his MOLARS. Definitely not looking forward to that!

Edited to add:
With the clarity that comes after a night's sleep (never mind how interrupted), I do realise that babies aren't born with teeth simply because they don't need them at that stage. And yes, of course it would have killed all breastfeeding mothers. I guess the right question is: why couldn't teething have been made painless? That, I don't have the answer for!