Easy Way to Get Out a Loose Tooth

My son is afraid to manipulate a loose tooth out of his mouth.  He drags it on for days, complaining about it the whole time with the tooth hanging by barely nothing at all.  So, two teeth ago, I put some Baby Orajel on a Q-tip and rubbed it around the gum of that tooth (including in between the loose tooth and the gum where it was separated).  It was quickly numb.  He had the loose tooth out both times within seconds!

I wish I'd thought of this about a few kids ago!

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Great Way to Get Kids to Floss

Getting my kids to floss has always been difficult. The smaller ones have a hard time manipulating the regular flosses with their hands and getting all the areas they're supposed to. Now there's a kids floss that my kids think is "cool" and even my four-year-old was able to do it herself after I showed her how briefly. They didn't mind me doing it but they were a bit impatient to do it themselves. Now that it's more fun for them, I'm hoping they'll continue to floss regularly now.

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Mouth Surgery Success

My daughter's mouth surgery is over and done with. It took a few extra weeks because they kept rescheduling it on us due to the doctor's schedule but it's done.

She had an impacted incisor that wouldn't come down. They waited and waited for it and nothing. So they cut through her gums on Friday and went hunting for it. They found it up close to her nose! Nice place for the little bugger to hide. It was quite deep.

So, they cemented a little button (like a tiny door knob) onto the tooth up inside her gums and attached a wire to it. They ran that wire from the button on that impacted tooth out of her gums and attached it to her braces and added a few stitches to her gums to close her up. They will slowly tighten that wire to bring that tooth down in small amounts over the next couple of months.

It's a painful process they've said. The mouth surgery went better than I expected and motrin is taking care of a lot of the pain for her. The way they talked though, it's going to be bad for her every time they tighten it so I am not looking forward to that.

This poor kid has had hell in her mouth. Seriously! She's had her palate broken to widen her mouth. That dropped all the impacted teeth down but this last one. She's had baby teeth pulled, teeth moved this way and that during all of this, trying to get them set up so when they're all down, she'll have a nice set of teeth.

We could have decided not to do all of that and just had some of her adult teeth pulled so they weren't all crowded in there but what kid wants to start out with less than a full mouth of teeth, especially in the front? Not mine. She was willing to go through what she needed to and she's getting a pretty smile out of it. If it'd been a back tooth, well then she probably wouldn't have minded but she wanted her front teeth in place.

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We're Heading Towards Finish...

My daughter has been through you know what with her mouth and orthodontic work. Her bone structure was too small, mouth too narrow. Several of her adult teeth were jammed up in her gums unable to come down, too many of them. The x-rays of her mouth were really bad. This would have eventually caused problems with talking and eating for her.

The choice was to pull several adult teeth so a few of them could drop down, leaving her without some of her adult teeth in the front (which would've been a blow to her self-esteem I am sure) or widen her bone structure with the use of a palate expander and then braces. The recommended route was the palate expander and braces. We went with this route. We couldn't pull adult teeth at age 10 and take away the opportunity for her to have normal looking teeth when she smiled for the rest of her life.

The palate expander broke the palate in her mouth apart and widened it. This was a horrible experience because I was the one who had to twist that key every day to widen it just a little bit, hurting her. It hurt me to hurt her. She'd lay there with tears sliding down her face. I would do what I needed to do and not let her see me shed any tears over it later. Thankfully, this was a short-term procedure! This then filled in and hardened so her mouth was wider.

Then came the braces. This hasn't been too bad.

Right now, we are waiting for one adult tooth to drop down. The rest have come down. They've been moving her teeth around to make room for it and now we wait. If it doesn't drop down soon, they will have to cut into her gums and pull it down. Obviously, she hopes it falls down by itself. So do I.

If that tooth was down, she'd be in braces for another six months and be done with it. As it stands now, we are probably looking at closer to a year. We're through the worst of it though. The palate expansion was the worst. That one was short term, which was a relief, and then a holding expander was placed there for the last six months or so. They took her holding expander out of her mouth today so she's thrilled about that.



Come on tooth...drop down!!

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