This entry hurts my heart to write. This is one of those moments that I wish I could rewind time. With that said, I know in the grand scheme of things this isn't a big deal and there are so many worse trials, but this still hurts my momma heart a lot. No parent wants to watch their child in pain.
2 Sundays ago, Austin and Bryson were taking a bath together upstairs. They typically only bathe downstairs in the large tub in our bathroom because there is more space. I'm not sure why they went upstairs to bathe, and I can't recall that they've ever taken a bath together upstairs. Our master bathroom gets the most use in the house, which I don't mind because then I don't have to do as detailed of a cleaning. The upstairs bathtub is pretty slippery though. I remembered after the accident happened that we bought a bath mat when we first moved into the house since we would bathe our babies in there, and we wanted it to be more safe. We have since thrown that bath mat out and that bathtub doesn't get used hardly at all.
I was downstairs playing a game with Caleb and Carter. Matt was up in the media room, checking in on the boys semi-often to make sure they were not splashing too much. Austin and Bryson love to take a bath together and usually spend about 30 minutes because they love to play together. Matt had asked them to get out of the bath numerous times as it was approaching bedtime. Finally they were obeying, and as Austin was getting out of the tub, he slipped and hit his mouth on the edge. There was a lot of blood, and it was difficult to ascertain the seriousness of the impact. Once Matt could finally look, he noticed a tooth was missing. The tooth fairy made an emergency visit and dropped off some money for Austin losing his first tooth. That helped a ton!
Just like Bryson, Austin was born with an extra front tooth so he and Bryson have 3 front teeth. Austin has an extra permanent front tooth in addition, while Bryson only has the extra baby tooth. The tooth that Austin knocked out was his extra baby tooth. Our next worry was if the tooth was actually knocked out or if it had been pushed up in his gum. (Bryson's best friend had that happen with his two front teeth due to a similar bathtub story.) Another worry was if the tooth broke and the root was still stuck up in his gum.
Austin calmed down pretty well. Though his mouth hurt, he said he didn't want any medicine. We thought he would wake up in the night in pain, but he slept all night. Matt got up 3 different times to check on him and make sure he was sleeping okay.
The next morning, Labor day, we called the emergency dental line. The on-call dentist took a look at the bottom picture and told us to wait a few days for the swelling to go down and then go in, so I scheduled an appointment for Wednesday.
After looking at an x-ray, the pediatric dentist said that the tooth was completely gone (yay!) but also that his extra permanent tooth had cracked the root of the baby tooth next to it. She said to give it a week and see how it heals. She said it was possible to keep the baby tooth even though the root was cracked.
I prayed and prayed all week that it would heal well and that the gum would be strong enough to hold and keep that tooth. That may be silly to some, but I didn't want my baby to go around for the next 3 years with an even larger gap, not to mention the trauma of pulling out the tooth.
Unfortunately when we had our follow-up visit the next week, our dentist said that the crack had spread, the tooth was too wiggly, and it was starting to turn gray. It will be necessary to pull out the tooth. We are now waiting to hear back from a pediatric oral surgeon whether he will be willing to pull out the baby tooth plus the extra permanent tooth now. (We were planning on pulling out the extra permanent tooth at 6 years old.) The response will likely be that the permanent tooth is too fragile. Plan B is the dentist will pull out the baby tooth in the office with an oral sedative and laughing gas.
So more to come on this. To be continued...
About an hour after it happened--still managing a smile.
The next morning
x-ray showing the cracked root
(This is the 2nd x-ray showing how the crack had spread.)
No comments:
Post a Comment