All I Want for Christmas is my... Lateral Incisor?

Poor Allie. Poor me. Actually, I would say this whole situation traumatized me more than Allie, even though she's the one who lost her tooth. And here I thought she would lose her first tooth the normal way-- you know, in a couple years a tooth would start to wiggle, and she'd play with it with her tongue until it fell out on its own. A nice and easy visit from the tooth fairy. I never thought the tooth fairy would smack her in the face. Well, actually it was the coffee table that did that.

After lunch yesterday the girls ran to Allie's room where they giggled and played. Since they weren't fighting I went in to my room to relax for a minute at the computer. I guess they had started to run around the house, Allie chasing Sami as usual, since Sami loves to be chased. Sami's giggle grew louder as she ran toward my room, the laughter followed by a deafening BANG! Then silence. I knew the noise had been something whacking the coffee table, and although it sounded like a baseball bat, I knew better and just prayed it wasn't Allie's head. I ran out to the living room. Allie knelt by the table, her hand cupped over her mouth, and she began screaming. Hurrying to her side, I pulled her hand away from her mouth to find gushing blood. After gently looking under her upper lip, I saw that her right lateral incisor (thanks, Mom, for the dental term) had been smashed in. It was still there, but not in the right place, with the gums already clotting and turning purple.

It took me a moment to come to my senses really. My heart sank and I cringed at the thought of what had just happened to my baby's face... and of what could have happened. Sami stood crying at the sight of Allie's injury, and I ran to the kitchen to grab a paper towel for Allie to hold at her mouth until I could grab a rag from our bathroom. I told her we'd have to go to the Emergency Room. And then I noticed Allie was dancing while I spoke to her.

"Allie, do you have to go to the bathroom?"

"Uh-huh," she whimpered, tears staining her cheeks.

"Darn it, Allie! Why do you always wait so long? Come on." I was a wee bit stressed out at that point, and she was slightly incapacitated, so I just did everything for her, with the exception of actually peeing.

I paged Kevin to fill him in on where we were going and what happened, and then got the girls shoes on them. We were about to leave when I realized we needed to pray. I asked Allie if she'd like to pray. Again, she responded with, "Uh-huh." I grabbed a girl in each arm, and we embraced as I prayed. I wish I had thought of that a little bit sooner, because that's really what helped me calm down.

We got in the van and drove to Holmes, Allie occasionally crying when something outside the car, like a book store or a pedestrian, wasn't holding her attention.

After parking and walking into the ER, we found it pretty much empty. I took a good glance around just to make sure that it really was as desolate as it seemed, and I sighed in relief. It took a good twenty to thirty minutes to get all the information needed to get her into a room to be examined, but she sat patiently holding the rag to her mouth. The girls were given little hand-sewn teddy bears-- for Allie, hers has become nearly as important and cherished as her Tiger.

In the room, the nurse turned the TV onto the PBS cartoons, which held the girls attention while their overwhelmed mama slipped out into the hallway to cry silently. The nurse had explained to me that there wasn't anything they could do for her teeth, and that I'd have to take Allie to a dentist. All they could do there was stitch up the wound inside her lip.

"She has a dentist, right?" The nurse had asked. Yeah, so that was on my to-do list for this month-- find her a dentist and take her to her first cleaning. Still hadn't done it. But now this had to be her first trip to the dentist. I was discouraged at the thought of calling my own dentist for fear the office staff would say she'd have to be in pain for two days until she could be seen. And then I thought about how she was missing her dance class at that moment (something which would devastate Allie upon realization of the fact), and I remembered about the solo she was to excited to sing in church this coming Sunday. I wiped the tears from my eyes and glanced back in the room at my sweet, innocent babies. Allie suddenly seemed so small, so young-- too young to be going through something so awful.

And then Kevin showed up, concerned at the sight of tears on my face. Poor guy just didn't understand why I was standing in the hall crying. He went in to talk lovingly to Allie, rubbing her soft head. Of course she was zoned out on the cartoon, and I don't think caught a word of what Dad was saying.

The nurse was a bit delayed in stitching up Allie due to a car accident that had brought in a few injured teenagers. But soon she came back with another male attendant. He held Allie's head while the nurse gave Allie's lip a numbing shot. Again, Allie was too much into Dragon Tales that she didn't make a sound. After finishing the stitches, the nurse went to get a list of some dentists to call while the attendant named Sam grabbed a couple Popsicles for the girls to munch on. Kevin went to the desk to see if they could look up Dr. Artley's phone number, Dr. Artley being our dentist. I had no idea if he took children, but I thought I'd check. The receptionist told me over the phone to just bring Allie in, so after being released that's what we did.

Dr. Artley looked at her teeth and took some x-rays. He could tell the tooth was so loose it would eventually fall out-- no point in trying to save a baby tooth anyway, with all the pain Allie would have to go through for that to happen. He suggested we just pull it, so that's what we had him do. He warned us about the shot, so while he prepped, I took a moment and explained the situation to Allie-- that the dentist would need to pull the tooth out, but to do that he would have to give her an ouchy shot, but it wouldn't last long. I asked the nurse to put a movie in for Allie to watch, which she did quite willingly. And then Dr. Artley came over with the syringe. I looked away until Allie started crying and then leaned down and grabbed her hand and held it tightly, kissing her head. That brave little girl held completely still the entire time. The actual tooth extraction took maybe ten seconds, and then our fat-lipped baby was done, with a big wad of gauze stuffed in her mouth.

I was so proud of that little girl-- to have gone through such physical trauma that afternoon without complaining. I don't consider crying to be complaining-- crying is therapeutic and healthy, complaining is just annoying. The ER nurse said Allie was her best patient of the day by far, and Dr. Artley was stunned by Allie's tolerance and patience, especially since she's only 4 1/2 years old. The hygienist put Allie's extracted tooth into a little tooth locket she could keep and wear.

Last night after her oatmeal dinner, she got in the bath happy as a clam, occasionally popping up to look at her "silly smile" in the mirror. After that, she's ask us every ten minutes if we wanted to see her tooth, and we'd excitedly declare we did. We informed her about the tooth fairy, and she faithfully put her tooth under her pillow in anticipation of getting money. Kevin slipped two quarters under there while she slept later that night. This morning we asked her if she got any money, and she said no-- that she only got a couple quarters. She thought it was cool when we told her that quarters were money.

She ended up going to school, too. Couldn't miss the annual preschool Thanksgiving feast of healthy kiddie snacks! She proudly shared her toothy smile with the faculty, and they pretended to be excited for her, while they glanced over at me in pity. I could see it in their eyes. Poor baby.

And then, what did Allie do when we got to school, with her jumping out of the van to run to the sidewalk? Tripped.

I almost had an aneurysm.