All I Want...Is My Two Front Teeth Back!

When Taylor went to the dentist for the first time back in July she had x-rays done. Those x-rays showed us that she had an extra permanent tooth on the top, in the front. The dentist recommended that we go see an oral surgeon and see what he wanted to do about it. So we went to see the oral surgeon in August and he let me know that it was going to be in Taylor's best interest to have the extra permanent tooth removed. He said by removing it we would hopefully keep Taylor from having to have multiple sets of braces. He said it was up to me when we did the surgery or if we did it at all, but he recommended removing it as soon as possible. He also told me that when he did the surgery that he would probably have to remove her two front baby teeth to get to the permanent tooth. At the time, I was ok with this risk and kept praying that he wouldn;t have to take her baby teeth out. But more than anything, I just prayed that she would be ok through the surgery.

So today was the day...it was time for her surgery. I decided to wait until after she was 4 so that hopefully, if they did have to remove her baby teeth, that it wouldn't be too long before her permanent teeth came back in. We had to be at the surgery office at 8:00am so Diana came over to the house to be with Liam at 7. We left the house with Taylor and made our way up there. They took Taylor back and did another 3D x-ray on her to make sure that they knew exactly where the tooth was and how to get to it. After the x-ray the doctor told us that he was pretty sure that he would have to take the baby teeth out. :(

We went into the room with Taylor and they took her blood pressure and hooked her up to a heart monitor and got her really comfy in the dentist chair. She wasn't too excited about sitting in the chair at first, but I sat right next to her and she did ok. She got to have a race with me and Will and the nurses to see who could drink their juice the fastest, only Taylor didn't know that her juice had some happy medicine in it. But she won the race! And soon she was breathing in some oxygen and starting to drift off to sleep. That was mine and Will's cue to leave the room. It was so hard to leave my little princess in that chair and know that they were fixing to take out her teeth. We had talked to her about what might happen, but I don't think any of us were really prepared for it!

Me and Will went back to the lobby and sat and fretted. They told us that the surgery would only take about 20 minutes or so, but after an hour we still hadn't heard anything! Talk about making me crazy. I thought I was going to throw up the whole time we were out there. I tried to distract myself by checking facebook and texting Kimberly and watching HGTV that was on, but I was so nervous. They finally came out and told us that the surgery was over and that she was just trying to wake up a little bit. About 10 mintues later they finally let me go back and what I saw made me almost immediately start crying.

My little baby girl was laying in the dentist chair with tears in her little eyes, her front teeth were gone, and blood was pouring out of her mouth. I felt sick. The nurses couldn't get her to bite on the guaze like they wanted her to so the bleeding wasn't stopping quite as well as it should have been. They let me pick her up and I took her over to the chair and just held her and tried to cuddle her and comfort her. She immediately started asking why I let them take her teeth out. Talk about some guilt! Here is my baby, my firstborn, bleeding and crying and blaming me for it! I started questioning why I even let them do the surgery and what was I thinking and all kinds of irrational things. We thought it might help if she got to see her teeth in the little box, but it didn't do much good. The doctor came in and said that Taylor's extra permanent tooth was actually fused to her real permanent tooth. He said that he has never seen that happen with an extra tooth in the front of the mouth and rarely saw it with teeth in the back of the mouth. So he said it was good that we got the tooth out. I was still not so sure.

We finally got to go home and Taylor just whined the whole way back. Her mouth was still very bloody and she was groggy and she kept asking why I let them take her teeth. It was a long drive home. We dropped off her prescription at Walgreens and then went home to relieve Grandma of Liam duty. Will and Liam went back to the store to get the medicine and I thought that me and Taylor might get a nap in. But Taylor wanted nothing to do with a nap! She wanted to watch a movie and eat pudding and drink chocolate milk and was all over the place.

Will and Liam got back with the Tylenol with codeine and we gave Taylor some thinking it might make her relax a little and help her take a nap. But again...she just wanted to run all over the place. She was not tired at all. We kept her on the couch as much as we could, but she never did go to sleep. We looked out the window once and saw...

It was snowing! We didn't mind because we didn't have anywhere to go anyways! It was big flakes falling down and was so pretty to watch.

Taylor and Liam wanted to go out and see the snow!

Taylor wanted to act like she was asleep, but she wasn't fooling anyone!

I am so thankful that Taylor never did complain of pain during this whole thing. She has some stiches left in her gums that are kinda bothering her, and she pulled one of them out and almost made me have a heart attack, but she has not complained of pain at all. She has been bouncing off the walls!

We heard a knock at the door a little later in the day and Nonnie, Poppy, and Kimberly had come to visit! They brought a big bag of goodies for Taylor, including a tooth fairy pillow!

This made Taylor smile! You can kinda see the dried blood still on her little gums...makes me sad :(

They brought a princess balloon and Taylor loved it!

All the goodies they brought! Taylor is so lucky to have family that loves her so much!

Taylor and Daddy writing a letter to the tooth fairy asking her to leave Taylor's teeth and not take them when she visits.

All ready to go to sleep! She decided that she wanted to sleep on the couch in case she started hurting during the middle of the night. She was so excited to put her teeth in the little box into the tooth fairy pillow.

That smile is going to be hard to get used to, but I still think it is adorable!

I am still kinda questioning my decision to do this surgery. I hope that she won't have too many problems while she is missing her two front teeth. And I hope she will forgive me one day...

The tooth fairy let me know that she was going to leave Taylor 5 gold coins for being such a brave little girl. She even left some fairy dust behind to let Taylor know that she had been there!