The Trip of the Tooth

Last night at the airport Nicholas did a face plant, knocking one of his front teeth (the right one, for my record keeping purposes) out of place.  Now, it could have been worse--the tooth was a little out of line (behind) from his other front tooth and there was a thin line of blood right at the gum line, but it wasn't hanging or really wiggly and he didn't have a mouth full of blood.  We were about to get on a plane, but we decided it wasn't severe enough to cancel our trip and flew to Maryland as planned. 

I did call his dentist on her cell as soon as we landed and on her advice realigned Nicholas' tooth last night after he fell asleep (the fact that I could do this without waking him up tells you both that it wasn't as severe of an injury as it could have been and that the kid was exhausted) and then got him in to a dentist here this afternoon.

The current verdict is optimistic but uncertain.  As long as we can keep him from putting too much pressure on that tooth for the next week, it should tighten back up in the gum given how little looseness there is currently.  This is easier said than done, but at least he no longer sucks his thumb and can go without a sippy cup because those would be clear sabatoge for that tooth.  The longer term outlook is less certain.  The dentist today couldn't tell whether or not there was permanent damage done that would kill the tooth.  Basically we might wake up one morning to discover that his tooth has started to darken and it might turn black.  Or he might be perfectly fine.  It is just a wait and see game and there isn't anything they are going to do on a baby tooth at this stage.

The only cool thing about this episode was that we got to see a really cool x-ray of his teeth in which you could see the adult teeth coming in on top of the baby teeth.  And it was amazing to me how close those front two adult teeth are.  I have no idea how long it takes them to get to where they actually push the baby teeth out, but one of them looked like it was almost touching the top of the baby tooth under the gum line.

Other than the tooth, we have had a great trip so far.  But that is the subject of another post.