The Tooth, the Whole Tooth & Nothing but the Tooth

Warning: This is not for the faint of stomach (YES, I AM queasy even as I write this!)

We are pretty far removed from the "My baby lost her first tooth!" and thankfully the, "MO-O-O-O-MMMMMMMMMM, THE TOOTH FAIRY FORGOT TO COME," days don't happen too often. Good thing as that tooth fairy has a really bad memory! We are to the the stage when a child says, "Mom, I think there's a hole in my tooth," we shoot up a prayer, "Lord, PLEASE let this be a baby tooth!"

My elder child, who can sit and watch operations on Discovery Health while my other child & I cover our eyes so we don't barf, discovered a tooth that "looked like it had black on it." Um, well, yeah, that would be a cavity, dear. "Oh, no! I hope it's not a grown up tooth!" Yeah, us, too.

We've concluded that it's a baby tooth and there are other teeth growing in around it. She has never had the best mouth for teeth coming in. They come in at very strange angles and locations. Not out of the roof of her mouth or anything, just not exactly where they should. Last year she had a baby tooth that cracked and half of it fell out. The big tooth came in, and that half a tooth would just not budge. Thankfully it finally did. Now she has this "black looking tooth" that is very wiggly and another tooth growing in kind of in front of it. It NEEDS to come out. We told her she should just keep wiggling it til it comes out. Okay, I told her that. Daddy said, "Let Mommy pull it if you don't want me to do it." Natalie's words are more like, "That's GROSS! Pull it out now or you'll choke on it in your sleep!" And, knowing Natalie that thought comes with this one, "How will she get MONEY if she swallows it?" Why do kids get money for dead teeth anyway?

Bethany decided before it comes out we needed to take a picture of it. So, you have been thoroughly warned. This is not pretty. I've got the full face then a close-up. Lovely. Just lovely. Any dental students out there needing a patient?


P.S. If you like pictures like this, let me give you my dad's e-mail address. He has lots of pictures from the "healing process" of different surgeries he's had in recent years. Excuse me while I go find a bucket to use.