Toothless

Yesterday, Marxo had to get some teeth pulled.  She is the product of two people who have/had crooked teeth and is therefore pretty much doomed to a childhood full of orthodonture.

Fellan already started the process last fall with a palate expander and then this past May, he got brackets put on his two front teeth to pull them together. (Can't believe I forgot to include this tidbit on my blog!)

Brace Face!

Even though it seemed that Fellan's teeth were going to be really bad considering the way they first started coming in, I'm afraid that Marxo's little mouth is going to doom her to even worse things than Fellan.  Her first two permanent teeth (bottom front) came in over the last few months and one of them is almost completely sideways.

The last time we were at the orthodontist's office with Fellan, we asked him to take a look at her teeth and I think it took him about 2 seconds to look in her mouth and immediately start filling out "extraction orders" to our pediatric dentist.

Yesterday was the dreaded day.  She had already lived through getting a pedunculated pyogenic granuloma removed about a year an a half ago (which involved a trip to the oral surgeon and IV sedation, and which, once again, I can't believe I didn't document on here!), so she expected the worst. We kept on telling her she would have an oral sedative and that they didn't have to stick anything in her arm, but it really didn't make a difference to her.  She would cry about it every time we mentioned her impending "doom".


Amazingly, she didn't freak out too badly when we got to the dentist's office.  There was a little crying, but she pulled herself together and bravely went back and drank the oral sedative.  Then we had to wait for 45 minutes for it to kick-in.  I was expecting her to become loopy and act drunk, but that didn't happen at all.  She did seem to calm down a little, but she continued to work on her word-search puzzles while we waited.

When it was time to go back for the procedure, she calmly walked back and apparently had no trouble at all with it.  They said she was just fine during the whole thing.  And this morning she told me, "Next time I have to get any teeth pulled, I'm not going to be afraid at all." Poor thing.  Unfortunately, there probably will be a few more "next times".

Here she is showing off her toothless grin!  She lost her top tooth this past weekend while we were out of town in NYC.  Luckily, the tooth fairy found her at Grammy's.  And we found out this morning that the tooth fairy pays double for extracted teeth! :)

Toothless