I Don't Do Teeth

For the past week or so Alyssa had a tooth that was just slightly loose. She started wiggling it and fiddling with it, which was fine, but then she started pushing and twisting it more than it was ready to go. We kept telling her that the tooth would get wigglier on its own as the new tooth came through, but she kept on pushing. Yesterday morning she showed me a blood splattered napkin and told me that before she went to bed the previous night, she pushed really hard on her tooth. And then she showed me how she pushed really hard on her tooth. It made me cringe just watching her. In fact, it's making me cringe right now just writing about it. Of course it started bleeding, and she couldn't leave it alone after that.

Halfway through our second math lesson (Yesterday was a Plan A day. Yea!) She sprung up from her chair, yelling, "My toof, my toof, it's thtuck!" To which I replied things like, "Of course it's stuck. Leave it alone. It will come out on its own. It's not ready yet..." And then she showed me this:


She had pushed her tooth completely backward, then wedged it back into the hole it came from. I couldn't move it. I couldn't even wiggle it back to where it was supposed to be. It was absolutely, positively stuck.

Now, I'm a mom. I've done all sorts of yucky things in the last seven years. I've changed millions of poopy diapers. I've cleaned up all sorts of throw up messes. Just this morning Ethan coughed so hard that he threw up his Coco Roos into his cereal bowl. I was out of the room when it happened and when I came back to his, "Mom, look at my cereal!" calls, I honestly wondered where he had found chocolate pudding. I cleaned it up. No big deal. Messes don't bother me much, but I don't - do - teeth. They just weird me out. Cringe.

So while Alyssa hopped around the living room, yelling, "It hurths! My toof!" I tried calling Brian's dad to see if he could come help out, but no one answered their house phone or cell phones. Then I went ahead and called Brian at the office, which I hardly ever do. We don't have dental insurance. The doctors at our practice usually find a dentist to switch free services with, but we haven't found one yet. (We have been taking the kids to the dentist for their check ups. Don't worry about that.) I was calling Brian to see if I should just take her in somewhere when his dad called back. He said he would come take a look at it, and while we waited I had Alyssa lay down on her bed while I took some floss and started sawing at the skin her tooth was hanging on to. It took about ten minutes, and finally the tooth was free. Cringe.

And, of course, the tooth fairy forgot to leave a quarter last night, but luckily she didn't feel the tooth when she checked, so I just told her, "You stay downstairs with the boys while I go check," and came back downstairs claiming the quarter had fallen under the bed. I love having gullible children.