From the Mouth of My Babe

Ava has given us more excitement in the last 2 months than we care to have, and all revolving around her cute little mouth!

Ava has been seeing a dentist since she was 2. I take her to the same dentist I saw when I was little, so I feel rather confident in his abilities. Also- Ava's pediatrician (who was also my pediatrician) highly recommends this dentist, and thinks that he is rather conservative in the practice of altering teeth and such. So, he has been monitoring Ava's under bite for a little over 2 years now. Yes- under bite. Looking around our family tree...there isn't one to be found. Overbites, yes....under bites no. But lo and behold, John's mom remembers a great uncle (or third cousin?) who had an under bite. Well- that gene just decided to pop up in our darling little girl. Lucky us...

At our last visit, the dentist informed us that it was time for Ava to see the orthodontist. At the age of 4? Yes. We learned that the jaw is more easily manipulated at this age, and requires less time to move it into the correct position. Okay, but we were unsure of how she would handle headgear at the age of 4. I mean, our daughter already seems to be wise beyond her years, and I felt bad that she has to deal with these things at such a young age. Can't she just be a kid and enjoy it? Well, we met with the orthodontist, who explained that the headgear would only need to be worn at night for around 8 months. If we waited, there is a chance that headgear wouldn't work, and she would possibly have to go through surgery to reset her jaw. Okay then, that was enough to convince me (I just love those scare tactics).

So one day towards the end of January, we had our visit to glue her palatal expander in her mouth and fit her headgear to take home. I must say, my daughter is a trooper. She sat still for the dentist while they glued the appliance in place, all the while wanting to gag on the awful stuff. She had one little panic attack after her appliance was stuck to the roof of her mouth. I guess your tongue can't sit on the roof of the mouth where it usually does, there isn't room anymore, so her tongue had to find a new place to reside. She really freaked out about this. I can imagine, you must feel like you're choking on your tongue. I was about to take her over there and tell them to pull the thing out, that she wasn't ready for this. But then she calmed. The doctor explained about her tongue to her. She listened carefully and then started moving her tongue around in her mouth. Within a few minutes she was feeling a little better. The doctor explained she would have to learn to talk with it in too. She now speaks really clearly. After the expander was in, he showed her the purple headgear and rubber bands she would have to wear at night. It looks like some sort of torture device to me, but Ava seemed to not be concerned. She thought it was kind of cool.





One of the duties I had for the palatal expander was to take this little key (that looks like a straightened paperclip with a curve on the end) and stick it into the lock on the roof of her mouth, and turn it once towards the back of her throat. I was to do this once for 8 days. He showed me the little safety latch that it connects to..."Just in case she were to swallow the key!" He laughed and said this with a grin. I'm sure you've already guessed what happened.

I have Ava's head in my lap. I am sticking the key in the lock. It is attached to the safety latch, which is around my finger. The key is kind of long for Ava's little mouth, and when you push it towards the back of her throat it hits her tongue and makes her gag. I have a hold of the safety latch, but have let go of the key because her tongue grabbed it...and before you know it, it snaps right off of the safety latch (what the hell is the safety latch for, if the key can come off of it??!!!!) and is down the throat. Ava is freaking out. She is crying and screaming and I can't tell if she swallowed it or is choking on it. I finally see that she has indeed swallowed it. After calls around to various doctors, I have been informed that she needs to get to the emergency room and have an x-ray. Because the object has a sharp edge, it could have gotten stuck in her throat, or it could get stuck in her intestines. Did I mention it was now 11pm?

Ava and I head to the ER. She is really nervous, and I just CAN"T BELIEVE OUR LUCK. They check her in and she finally gets an x-ray. The x-ray shows the key passed to her stomach. The key is shown on the right side of her abdomen, and shows up in white. It is a long straight pin, with a circle at the top.


The doctor comes in and starts explaining our options. The key has passed to the stomach, so, we can put Ava out and retrieve the key. Or we can wait and see if it passes the intestines. If it doesn't pass the intestine, they will have to "split her stomach open and do surgery". This was the doctors words, right in front of my 4 year old daughter. If I could have sprung across the table and wrung his neck, I would have, but he saw my daughter's face and exited quickly. Ava is a sensitive and very intelligent girl. She understood perfectly. And she began screaming, "NOOOOOO, I don't want my stomach opened. Please momma...please.. I don't want to go to sleep! I just want to go home!" The doctor said he's be back for my answer. I took one look at her and knew I couldn't put her through more stress that night. I got the statistics on how often objects don't pass, and I figured that if it passed her esophagus without getting stuck, then it should be able to pass her intestines. And I prayed really really hard. So I took her home.

The next day, she had to go in for another x-ray. When we finally got home at 1am, the pediatric gastro guy called and told us that if it didn't pass through the stomach by tomorrow afternoon he wanted to retrieve it. I started feeding Ava lots of food and water....hoping it would push through. At 2 the next afternoon we took Ava in for the 2nd xray. The key had passed through the small intestine and looked like it was in a good position to pass through the large intestine and exit. They were sure at this point, it would pass on it's own! Yeah! You can see the key, now on the left hand side of the abdomen towards the top.


Now, John and I were on "poo" duty, to save her from another x-ray. For the next 2 days we took turns searching through poo with rubber gloves. Three days later I found it! We cleaned it with clorox and that puppy is getting scrap-booked. And in the midst off all of this, Ava lost her second tooth on the bottom. She is so cute!