Two things about Emer

[ailbhe]

Today she said that a piece of her tooth came out at Meeting and she took it out of her mouth with her hand and it's gone. I can't tell whether or not that's true. It's five days until her dentist appointment. If I could rot my own teeth instead o fhers, I would. If I could repair her teeth byt strength of will, I would. If heartbreak and regret could undo the damage, it woudl be undone.

But it can't, and it's not, and I am crying. I want it to be ok. I don't want her sedated. I don't want her to lose a tooth before she's even three. I don't want her to have fillings and gaps and most of all I don't want her to have been so very very ill when she was eight months old and I don't want her to have had the antibiotics for that illness. The illness or the fever or the antibiotics are probably what damaged the unerupted tooth bud, then forming in her baby gum, and the antibiotics we forced into her, holding her mouth shut while she gagged them up and reswallowed them, going purple all the while, that's what gave her the oral aversion. And the oral aversion is what made toothbrushing so traumatic, so where Linnea at this age brushed her own teeth almost perfectly and opened gleefully for a grown-up finish, Emer fights and screams and cries and locks her jaw.

The only good thing is that since the more intense toothbrushing regime, her teeth no longer hurt her - the fighting is fury, not pain, now, and that's very clear. I'm trying to work out how to change the way she likes to breastfeed, too, because the teeth most exposed to milk are in much better condition than the ones which hardly ever get touched. But her positioning preferences are very strong.

---

This evening, Emer tied the arms of her nightie around her neck, and hung it red behind her back, because "My Am A Hupahewo."

then she took it off and gave me a careful step-by-step lesson in how to tie a knot; "And den dis bit like dat, and den dis bit fwoo heah, and den dis bit UP, and den..."

---

There is a whole lot of love in the world.

Comments

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

Entirely un-related, but both make me feel like a bad mother. Holly has a dead front tooth from an accident when she was smacked in the face at toddler group with a woodne box by another child. On purpose too, in temper. It is now grey & shows up in all of her photos :/ Our dentist says it's just luck really if the dead nerve for the milk tooth means a dead one for the adult tooth too. I have a couple more years of worry until we know.
She also had a filling at our last check-up, from a pre-cavity. Never heard of them before, but it would apparently have developed into a cavity if left. One of those things I was told, all the other teeth are fine. Holly eats a healthy varied diet, there's no obvious explanation :/
Kate eats an extremely limited diet & I struggle to get her 5 a day in her & her teeth are all perfect.

[myfirstkitchen.livejournal.com]

My sister had a grey one from tripping over a milk bottle and falling onto a concrete step. The adult tooth was fine.

[chiasmata]

I had a dead milk tooth from an unfortunate incident involving my younger brother's fist -- it never did go grey, which the dentist always told me was Very Lucky, and the adult tooth is fine.