Toothless...

No, I'm not talking about the dragon from the movie, "How To Train Your Dragon".  I am talking about my two year old daughter and her latest activity.  On Saturday, I was at the Wilton Tent Sale with my sister and 2 friends and my cell phone went off.  It was Ryan.  "Juliana faceplanted in the grass and her mouth is bleeding.  I pushed her lip down and her gum is torn a bit.  I think she is okay.  What should I do?"  In the background I can hear Juliana screaming.  Now, Juliana is not your typical child.  She fell down the steps (all the way from the top to the ceramic tile at the bottom) and did not cry.  When she falls and skins her knees outside, she doesn't even whimper.  My response, "Call the dentist and see what they want you to do."  10 minutes later my phone goes off again, and Ryan tells me that he and Juliana are on their way to Lombard, because our dentist is closed this weekend but the Lombard office is open and they want to see her. 

The next time I hear from Ryan, he is calling because they are on their way home.  "One of her bottom teeth is very loose.  The dentist wanted to pull it right then, but because they couldn't get ahold of her cardiologist to see if she needed to be pre-treated they couldn't pull it."  "So what are they going to do?"  "They are sending us home with a prescription for antibiotics to start today and she can only eat soft foods.  On Monday we have to call and get her into the normal office so they can re-evaluate her and have time to talk to her cardiologist."

So, today was the first day they were able to get us in.  I was able to leave Noah with Theresa, and she told me to bring his swim stuff since it's so hot out.  Dr. Chung looked in Juliana's mouth and noted that the tooth had stabilized a tiny bit and said that we could continue the soft food diet for a few more weeks and then re-evaluate again or we could just pull it today and be done with it.  I made the decision to pull it, because since we started the soft food diet, Juliana has barely eaten anything, and we've been pulling out the "big guns" to bribe her to eat: ice cream, pudding, yogurt, milk shakes, but she has wanted nothing to do with it and instead has wanted to eat the "forbidden" food.  I weighed her this morning and she was already down in weight, so even though I didn't want to pull one of her teeth, I didn't want to go through another few weeks of her not eating when it's hard enough to get her to want to eat.

They brought us back into a room and closed the doors so that her screaming wouldn't be as loud to the other patients.  I got into the chair with her and she knew something was up and began to whimper a bit.  I started praying hard.  First they needed to numb her, so they had me lay back and wrap my legs around her legs and my arms around her to restrain her.  Then a tech held her head down while Dr. Chung numbed her.  Juliana screamed through that.  Then we had to let that kick in a little bit, and Juliana settled down.  Then, Dr. Chung came back in.  I resumed my position, and Juliana started to scream again.  It didn't take long to remove her tooth, and as soon as they were done Juliana stopped screaming.  I think it was more traumatic for me than it was for her (since it seems like I'm always the one doing the restraining).  Dr. Chung said that this won't affect anything, she will just have a gap there until her adult tooth comes in several years from now (all this from falling in the grass!).

After we picked up Noah, he made sure to let me know that I need to put Juliana's tooth somewhere so the Tooth Fairy will find it and bring Juli something special.  What a day!  But Juliana came through it like a champ.  I'm so proud of her!

Juli's tooth!  This big thing came out of her mouth!  Nasty, eh?