Emily’s big-girl bed has a lovely metal frame. She and Sebastian were jumping on the bed last week before bedtime when Emily decided that she needed to quickly bury her head in her pillow. So, after a few warm-up jumps to build up momentum, she spontaneously flung herself face-first towards her pillow. And missed. I was sitting on the floor next to the bed and all I heard was a wet and muffled crunch. Emily had enthusiastically met the thin metal bar with her top right front tooth. Just from the gruesome sound of the collision alone, I couldn’t bear to look at my little girl, who was now convulsing with agony. This, in turn, set off Sebastian crying. Jan ran into the room to find both children crying hysterically on the bed in a small pool of blood and me shielding my eyes while writhing in the fetal position on the floor. I just freaked out and couldn’t bring myself to look at the actual damage. I didn’t have to look to know it was bad.

When Emily finally spit the blood out of her mouth, we were able to see how her tooth was now tilting significantly inwards towards her tonsils. My first reaction was to try and push it back into place but Jan wasn’t letting me within 10 feet of Emily’s mouth if that was my plan. So we just calmed her down, cleaned her off, gave her some pain-relief medication, and put her to bed. A quick search on the information superhighway advised us to make a dentist appointment as soon as possible (very good advice!) and prepared us for one of three possible outcomes: 1) the dentist would push the tooth back into place, 2) just leave it alone and wait for it to eventually fall out along with all her other baby teeth, or 3) the tooth would have to be pulled.

To make a long and painful story short, the dentist said to just leave it alone. The tooth may change color in the coming weeks but there isn’t any reason to mess with it. The worst case scenario is that the cockeyed tooth somehow messes with the yet-to-surface adult tooth to follow, causing it to grow in crooked, but that is something that we won’t know until it actually happens. The result of all this is that our little girl’s angelic smile has been redneckified. Neither Jan nor I can stop staring at Emily’s mouth when she talks (or laughs or smiles). Much more noticeable than the pushed back tooth itself is the effect on the unmoved other front tooth, which now looks like it’s all alone and sticking out. I would post a photo, but I’m too ashamed.