Hi there. Yesterday, my 3 and a half year old dd was running down the hill at our house and fell on her face and knocked out her front tooth. It was very traumatic--for her, certainly, and also for me. I'm having flashbacks of it and feeling very guilty and worried for her, so I'm trying to be as proactive as possible (and also to just accept that what happened is just one of those things and to let it go!).
So first of all, we live in our university's graduate student and family housing. There are lots of doctors and dentists here and her fall happened right between our house and our neighbors'. The dad there is a doctor so he instantly helped calm her down, clean her up and assess the situation with me. Meanwhile, his wife went to *their* next-door neighbor's house, who is a dental student. He said to take the tooth and go to the ER just to make sure everything is okay. I also called the dentist's emergence line and they told me that they would not attempt to re-implant a baby tooth and just to clean her up and give her ibuprofen, etc. and to follow up at some point with a visit to the dentist. I opted to go to the ER just to make sure everything was okay. We put the tooth (which came out in one piece, root and all) in a baggy of milk and headed out.
At the hospital, we saw three different doctors, all of whom said they would not/could not re-implant baby teeth. They indicated that eventually the dentist might like to put a spacer in to make sure there were room when the adult tooth came in, but they weren't sure. They basically told me, you know, her tooth came out in a more traumatic way than most kids' baby teeth do, but that the end result was really the same, and not to worry.
But I am! At the moment, her lip and face are all cut up and her mouth is very swollen. That is going to go away, though. What is not going to change, apparently, is that she is going to be toothless! At least for another 2.5-5 years! I worry about how she will look, how she will feel, how it will affect her speech and her ability to eat as she did before.
I made a follow-up appointment with the dentist today who also assured me that that they do not (cannot) re-implant baby teeth. I did not ask anything else but I will at her appointment, which unfortunately is more than a month away.
I wonder, then, finally, if anyone else has experienced this. Are there cosmetic alternatives? If not, how did your child manage? I'm just so worried about my little girl. I keep stressing that she's like a big girl now (she has some older friends in the neighborhood who are all losing their teeth), and that she is beautiful, and what character this gives her, etc. But not everyone is going to be like that.
TIA for reading through all this and for your thoughts, advice!
So first of all, we live in our university's graduate student and family housing. There are lots of doctors and dentists here and her fall happened right between our house and our neighbors'. The dad there is a doctor so he instantly helped calm her down, clean her up and assess the situation with me. Meanwhile, his wife went to *their* next-door neighbor's house, who is a dental student. He said to take the tooth and go to the ER just to make sure everything is okay. I also called the dentist's emergence line and they told me that they would not attempt to re-implant a baby tooth and just to clean her up and give her ibuprofen, etc. and to follow up at some point with a visit to the dentist. I opted to go to the ER just to make sure everything was okay. We put the tooth (which came out in one piece, root and all) in a baggy of milk and headed out.
At the hospital, we saw three different doctors, all of whom said they would not/could not re-implant baby teeth. They indicated that eventually the dentist might like to put a spacer in to make sure there were room when the adult tooth came in, but they weren't sure. They basically told me, you know, her tooth came out in a more traumatic way than most kids' baby teeth do, but that the end result was really the same, and not to worry.
But I am! At the moment, her lip and face are all cut up and her mouth is very swollen. That is going to go away, though. What is not going to change, apparently, is that she is going to be toothless! At least for another 2.5-5 years! I worry about how she will look, how she will feel, how it will affect her speech and her ability to eat as she did before.
I made a follow-up appointment with the dentist today who also assured me that that they do not (cannot) re-implant baby teeth. I did not ask anything else but I will at her appointment, which unfortunately is more than a month away.
I wonder, then, finally, if anyone else has experienced this. Are there cosmetic alternatives? If not, how did your child manage? I'm just so worried about my little girl. I keep stressing that she's like a big girl now (she has some older friends in the neighborhood who are all losing their teeth), and that she is beautiful, and what character this gives her, etc. But not everyone is going to be like that.
TIA for reading through all this and for your thoughts, advice!
She is now 7.5 now, one of those teeth came in early this year, the other one is coming in right now. Her speech did change slightly, some words became harder for us to understand, today she has no issues. As far as eating, I remember her eating corn of the cob the next week. 
It never slowed her down. She ate often on the sides of her mouth when she was gnawing on something. Only once did we ever have anyone tease her about her teeth. Most kids never really asked or if they did, they thought it was awesome that she had lost teeth, like that some how made her older. Adults often did assume she was older and had lost them naturally, she is average sized so she always has looked her age.
They're discolored and hanging in there but are wiggling their way out prematurely, so she'll also be toothless for a few years. Like you, I felt lousy about it; but multiple xrays and dentist visits later, I've been assured that this is pretty run-of-the-mill for adventurous kiddos. 
) that they only do spacers for molars. They also said that they can't know whether or not there will have been damage to the adult teeth, really, until they come in. Her dentist might try to do an X-ray but it's a tricky area at her age and they said it might not tell them anything conclusive anyway. But they thought there was a good chance that her adult teeth would be fine...
