being a parent can sometimes cause you to panic when it's nothing and even though you've been told "it's nothing" and tell yourself "it's probably nothing" you still panic. other times your told "you should go in" (to the doctor) and you wait and wait to see if it goes away on it's own. I am currently on week 4 of a nasty chest cold, that is probably nothing...but could be bronchitis or pneumonia or viral or I could really use an antibiotic. this brings me to the boys; I have brought them into the doctor to be told, it's nothing, or it's viral and it has to run it's course...and I've brought them in when it is something like a
double ear infection and tonsillitis. Or like 2 years ago when we had strep throat 4 times in 8 months. Or
your-kid-has-medium-sized-tonsils. This time was with
Emmitt. I notice this bruise looking thing on his gum or in his gum. So I do the usual: ask just about everyone I see to take a peak in his mouth and tell me if they have ever seen anything like it. Now I couldn't guarantee that he didn't bump his mouth on something and cause it to bruise...I can't watch them 24 hours a day or protect them enough from normal bumps and bruises. I get the mixed answers of: never seen anything like it you should take him to the doctor who could tell you it's a dentist thing or take him to the dentist who says it's a doctor thing or just wait and see if it goes away. And I feel bad for
Emmitt who is clearly in pain from teething or in pain from this bruise on his gum, and I feel stupid for not knowing if he bumped it on the coffee table while he was chewing on wood for his afternoon snack. What if I go in and they say, he bumped it and I feel like a total paranoid parent...which I thought with the second child I would be less paranoid. But what if the kid has an
abscessed tooth or a rotting baby tooth or something else totally weird. What if they need to lance this to drain the blood pooling under his gum or worse, they pull a baby tooth before it's even hit the surface??? What if? So I of course take my mother's advice-they really do always know best-and call our local dentist. He says it's probably a
hematoma of the gum from the tooth actually pushing through but if it'll make me feel better I can swing by and he'll take a look in the hallway just to put me at ease...okay now we're going somewhere. So
immediately after work I pick the boys up from daycare and head to the dentist. I wait for him to call us back to the hallway or where ever and he straps on the gloves and attempts to look in
Emmitt's mouth. We are successful after a few attempts of prying his lips apart-it helps that he is still strapped in his
car seat. The dentist finally and
casually says "yep, just a
hematoma of the gum, that's really nothing, you should wait and see what the eye teeth can do-sometimes the whole gum is black". So I officially brought my kid in for a bruise! But it could have been one of the freaky things I thought, right?
And just to show you all how
unbelievably weird it looks-here's a picture-This was taken yesterday and I had him at the dentist 3 weeks ago. The tooth is still not through the surface, but in the last 3 weeks a bunch of other teeth have come through...
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