"Bite him back"

Tonight Derek and I decided that we needed to try something different about Gavin's biting issue. Yep, he has a slight problem with biting. For the past week, he has been biting me, and only me. He will bite me when he is "hugging" me and being "so gentle." I am almost positive that he has no idea that he is hurting me, and is just teething? Anyways, I have always jumped, said "no" very seriously, and moved him away. This week I have tried to just walk away (He cries) and I have tried the whole positive reinforcement thing. Whenever he is "lovey" (Is that a word?) I will say to him "Oh, Gavin, you are so sweet, so nice to give momma hugs and kisses!!!!) Well, he is still biting. Its like the work "no" to him is not a bad thing. I DO say it loud, give a hurt face, and I am pretty upset. The boy sees nothing, he will not even cry when I do this. He WILL cry if I take something away from him, so I KNOW he understands....or does he???

Tonight Derek comes home from work and says "I know what we can do to get him to stop biting!!!" I am SO ready to try anything, so lets hear it! Someone at work said they went through the same thing, and they just solved the problem in one day. When her (the woman Derek works with) son bit her, she just bit him back, and he stopped! Hmm.....Won't that teach him the wrong thing? Won't he think its OK to bite? Oh well...at this point we have tried everything that the books say, that the MD's say, and that my own instinct says. So here it goes!

After Gavin's bath, he ran to me and "loved" on me. Kisses, hugs, and you got it. A big old bite...on the arm. I took one look at Derek, and I bit Gavin on his arm. I did it pretty hard as I was afraid he would not realize that it hurt. He looked at me, looked at Derek, and LAUGHED OUT LOUD! It was one of those times where it was IMPOSSIBLE for us not to laugh. Derek was WAY worse than me. He was rolling on the ground, that's how funny it was. 

So, here we have our very first (big) parenting issue. How in the world do we fix this one. I am pretty sure biting my own child did NOT fix things, and now he just thinks biting is funny. GREAT!