Oral Surgery

When Ben was 18 months old, he had his first minor injury. While walking through the house with a sippy cup, he tripped and fell but kept that sippy cup in his mouth and that hard lid pushed three of his baby teeth all the way back up into his gums. It was a bloody mess. I thought he'd knocked the teeth out and so I looked all over for them. Not so.

Six months later, those three teeth were starting to reemerge from his gum line. However, I had a lapse of judgment one day and let him walk around with a sippy cup. Sure enough, he fell and knocked some of those teeth back up again.

So it's been a waiting game for the 5+ years since. There was one sad day a year ago when I got a call from his school that he needed to go to the ER for stitches after falling and cutting his lip. However, when I arrived at the school I was much more stressed to find out that he was also missing teeth from that fall. Hours and several xrays later, we were relieved to find that this time, those baby teeth were knocked out instead of pushed back up into the gums again.

Ultimately, there was one baby tooth that never did reemerge, even when it's permanent buddy came down. So that's how we ended up in the Oral Surgeon's office on Friday morning.

Thanks to a dose of Valium before leaving our house that morning, Ben was relatively mellow with the whole procedure. I say relatively because mellow for him is out of control for some. I held him on my lap while they got the IV in his arm for the "sleep medicine." But it only took one leg and one arm to hold him, and I didn't even break a sweat. That's amazing. Maybe he needs Valium every day =)

The surgery went well and I have the tooth (the only baby tooth I'll ever have to keep since he swallows every tooth he loses). The hardest part was those first couple of hours after he came out of it -- the numbness in his lip and nose was driving him crazy. He couldn't keep his hands off so I just sat and rubbed and tickled his nose. He also kept saying "the dentist can NEVER touch me" and "I told you that he can't touch me while I'm sleeping."

The highlight for him was riding in the wheelchair to the car after the surgery. We had to pry him out of it because he wanted to stay in. Here's his "sad" post-surgery face:


So we're relieved that it's all over and hopefully everything will heal well.

Moral of the story: If you are going to let your child walk around with a sippy cup, make sure it has a nice soft lid.