When babies attack: Labor pain is just the start

Ouch! Baby’s a biter
Even infants can inflict excruciating pain to their mothers long after the recovery from childbirth. When Heather Allard’s son, Brendan, was 6 months old and teething, he used her nipples as chew toys. “He bit both of my nipples with his new bottom teeth while breast-feeding and sliced my nipples nearly clear off,” she says. “I have a scar on each one to prove it. My husband said my nipples looked like a pencil eraser breaking off.”

Now 2 and weighing in at 30 pounds, her son wants to be carried around all day. “His favorite place is to be parked on my hip,” says Allard, 40, of Pawtucket, R.I. Not surprisingly, this takes a toll. “My back and hips hurt all the time, my left arm feels like it’s going to snap off and my feet ache.”

Allard also has two girls. And like Cambra, her son is more physical — having, for instance, “headbutted me several times from every angle,” she says.

“Maybe it’s a boy thing or maybe I’m just getting old, but man, I’m in constant pain,” Allard says.

Hitting where it hurts
Dads take their hits, too, often to the family jewels.

“A couple of weeks ago my [3-year-old] son came from the side, jumped in the air, and drove his knees into my groin,” says Laurence Sampson, 43, of Denver, whose two young girls also put the hurt on him at times. “Painful, as you might imagine. Most of the time I see it coming, and just roll my leg over for protection.”

You can’t always protect yourself from these parenting accidents, but it pays to “be aware and alert,” says Dr. Jennifer Shu, an Atlanta-based spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics and co-author of “Heading Home with Your Newborn.”

“You need to try to stay one step ahead of your child,” she says. So if your baby is a grabber, don’t wear dangling jewelry. If your tot is a scratcher, keep fingernails trimmed. And if your child leaves toys on the stairs, turn on the light and look around before you walk them.

Eye pokes can be difficult to prevent, Shu says. “It’s tough because you don’t want to go around wearing goggles all the time.” But there are practical precautions such as not picking up a child who is holding a crayon or pencil.

Still, accidents will happen. And while parents may never forget some of them, especially the ones that require a trip to the ER, it’s easy enough to forgive their devilish little darlings.

Even with a broken nose, Miller, the Colorado mom, hasn’t been scared away from the possibly of having more children — “after the trauma of the nose wears off.”

While parenting two young sons, Los Angeles-based writer Jacqueline Stenson has endured a black eye, a corneal abrasion (separate incidents, same eye), toe-curling nipple pain, neck pain, back aches and countless bumps and bruises … not that she’s complaining.

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