Go away, Tooth Fairy!

The tooth fairy made a fly by of our house this past week. Thankfully she was shoo'ed away and everyone still has all their original baby teeth.

It all started a few weeks ago when Claire took a spill on slide steps at school. She slipped on the steps and hit her mouth on the metal steps - there was a lot of screaming and a little blood - but no loose teeth, so we thought all was well. Two weeks later she was laughing at something and I did a double take - her front tooth had turned gray. Dr. Google explained that an injured tooth takes a couple of weeks to turn due to the nerve in the tooth dying.

I'll admit I was sad. I couldn't decide what was the lesser of two evils... a gap toothed child before her time, or a discolored glaring front tooth. Most people said the dentist would surely pull it - making me cringe the thought of pliers going into that sweet mouth. My vain side wanted her to remain with a perfectly white baby toothed smile that I loved so much. Kids do go through that awkward stage from ... say, 6 to 15 when they transition to baby teeth, to too large teeth, to braces to a nice smile. I did not want to rush into that stage! Every time I looked at her it was that tooth that I saw! All weekend I wondered what the dentist's verdict would be.

The verdict couldn't have been better. Not only is the dentist's main goal to keep the tooth in the mouth as long as possible, there is a very high chance that the tooth will turn back white as the body cleanses out the dead nerve. And if it doesn't, which is rare, the dentist does a simple procedure which creates a hole in the back of the tooth to get the yuck out, patch with tooth enamel, and viola! The white tooth has returned. Claire did have some pretty severe cracks in her enamel in both of her front teeth from the fall. X-rays showed no permanent damage to the root or the permanent teeth. Her permanent teeth, according to the dentist, were waaaayyyyy up there - not surprising since her first tooth did not show up until she was 13 months old and the pediatrician was threatening head x-rays if they didn't come in soon - "you know, to make sure she does have teeth in there."

So now we wait and avoid: biting hard food like apples, carrots, pizza (? that is hard?) and temperature sensitive foods like ice cream and soup. Yeah, right. I'm sure Claire is going to swear off ice cream for the next 3 years.