My dd's caps are falling off!

[zebrabelly]

My dd has a severe enamel defect on the top four front teeth. It showed up as soon as her teeth came in but I put off fixing them as long as possible b/c I was just not interested in general anesthesia for an 11 month old. She was just over two years old when we got them fixed (not w/ GA, ftr). She is now close to 3 1/2 and almost 2 months ago, one of them fell off. At the time I blamed myself b/c her dad was feeding her a tootsie roll at a kid's bday party and I was going to say no, but told myself to just relax this one time. HA. Next day the cap was gone. So, of course I've been real strict since then. But last night I noticed another gone! Luckily these two teeth were the ones with the least damage so it's not quite an emergency but WHY are the falling off all of a sudden now? We happen to have a dental appt in a couple weeks so they will be looked at, but, really... I'm so so so very upset for my girl. I upset for the money we'll have to spend again, I'm upset she'll have to be traumatized again. I almost wonder if we should just have them pulled - I mean if we're gonna have to replace these stupid things every year and a half...

Anyway, sorry, I'm so upset I'm rambling. My questions are:

1. Why are they falling off?
2. Will they have to strap her down again now that she's almost 3 1/2?

My ds is working on his first tooth now and gosh I hope I don't have to deal with this all over again with him.

[<<>>]

No advice here, but I understand your concerns, and I am hopeing someone will have an answer,
my dd had 10 caps put on when she was barely 2yo and she will be 3.5 in 3 months.... I hope we dont encounter that problem..
What kind of caps were they? my dd's were silver....
hope you get some answers...

[malamamama]

I'm not sure why they would be falling off, but I can tell you that my dd was strapped with a papoose for her caps at 2 years and by the time she was 3, we stopped the papoose because she could understand and reason so much more. Instead, she wrapped her self in her favorite blanket and I held her hands mostly for reassurance but also to ensure that she didn't reach up to her mouth.
Dd's two capped teeth were pulled because of absess. And she has a partial with two false teeth for proper speech development and for self esteem. Toothless at 2 was not so much of an issue but at 4 and 5 she is much more conscious of it all. (She recently had the partial removed for repair for a month)
So saving the teeth with caps or extracting the teeth both have their issues. Hang in there!

[ChioMamaPT]

The reason that they are falling off is the cement holding them in place has broken down and disintegrated. While a tootsie roll probably sped up the process, they would have come off regardless. You probably wouldn't want to pull the teeth because they are holding space for adult teeth. Without something in place, the teeth will shift and can cause permanent teeth to crowd depending on where they are in the mouth.
I am not sure what methods they would use to work on her--do you think she'd sit still? There are a lot of 3.5 yo children that do well at the dentist.

[malamamama]

The missing front teeth don't actually create spacial, crowding issues as do the back teeth. But there are speech and esteem issues without the front teeth in place.

[ChioMamaPT]

There are occasional instances where space becomes a factor with missing front teeth but I was mainly referring to any posterior teeth that have crowns.