I don't think I will ever forget last Saturday night. The Dippolds were over and we were sitting at our kitchen table eating dinner and Grace and Rylee were playing next to us by the sliding glass doors. They were playing good and then all of a sudden we heard a big thump and Rylee screaming. She had fallen and hit her chin on the metal tracks for the sliding glass doors. She had hit her chin so hard that her gums were bleeding and we noticed right away that her teeth had all been affected. She must have hit her lower and upper jaw together super hard because some of her upper teeth were shoved up and her lower teeth shoved down. We also noticed right away that she chipped a few teeth. It was such an awful, awful feeling to see your little baby scream in pain like that. We took her to the ER right away although the ER doc didn't do much. He tried looking at her teeth and Rylee screamed so he said he was going to page the Pediatric dentist on call. Well, we sat there for an hour and a half and the dentist never called back so they sent us home and said we had to see a pediatric dentist Sunday morning. That wasn't good enough for me so I called my daycare provider Jaime because she used to work in a pediatric dentist officeand I knew she would be able to help. She gave me a name and home number of the Dr. to call. The dentist was great and offered to meet us that night, but it would have been 11:00 so we just decided to meet in the morning since Rylee was tired and seemed to be doing alright by then. We brought her in Sunday morning and the Dr. took x-rays. They had Brad and I step out of the room while they did it and it was terrible to sit there and listen to your baby scream as they pin her down to get the x-rays. Of course it made me ball too. We found out she fractured 3 teeth (2 up top and 1 on the bottom), her upper middle right tooth got pushed back and up which caused it to fracture the root, and she tore up her gums on the bottom and had a hematoma on her upper gums. It sounds terrible and incredibly painful, but the good news is she is going to be ok (that's what I keep telling myself). We've had her on motrin the last few days to help with the pain and she seems to be doing fine. She's been waking up a few times during the nights crying so I think it hurts her more at night but if we go in there and rock her she goes back down pretty quick. We have another dentist appointment on Friday so we'll know more then. But basically we just have to wait and see what teeth make it and what teeth don't. Some may turn black or even fall out but we don't know for sure. Since her roots got shoved up to her permanent teeth we won't know what kind of damage her permanent teeth suffered until they come in years down the road. We'll have to deal with things as they happen. And again I keep telling myself its all cosmetic and it could have been worse. As her mom, you can't help but just feel terrible and think about how you could have prevented it. I know it was just a freak fall but you still feel so bad. I just wish I could have done something or traded places with her so she didn't have to suffer like that. My mom and Grandma told me that even though sometimes we want to, we can't bubble wrap our kids. I sure wish I could have had her in bubble wrap that Saturday.
At first Rylee's chin was just bruised but the bruise kind of faded quickly and her cut turned really dark.
Our poor little girl
We did manage to get a picture of her smiling to show her teeth. You can kind of get an idea of which teeth chipped and got pushed in. I thought about taking a picture of her gums but I just couldn't. They turned so dark and nasty and I didn't want to hold her down to get a picture, the poor girl has been through enough.