Even Our Dentist Had Never Heard This One Before.

You know you’re dealing with something unusual when you Google it and get zero relevant hits.

Or, when you call your dentist, and he admits that he’s never heard of a kid doing this before.

Leave it to Bennett.

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As previously blogged, Bennett lost his first tooth (and solved the tooth fairy mystery) on the first day of our Colorado vacation last summer.

I didn’t mention, at the time, that shortly after pulling his tooth for him, which bled a little more than the typical pulled tooth, he fainted a couple of minutes after the tooth was out. We were in the bathroom of our hotel, and he was a little freaked out by how his mouth felt and the bleeding. I had him rinsing his mouth and spitting in the sink, and thankfully, I was standing right there, because he started to pass out.

Except, having not experienced a kid fainting before, I thought he was having a seizure or something. Because it’s not a melt-into-a-puddle-on-the-floor kind of thing…no, kids stiffen up, eyes roll back but stay open, and they turn white as a ghost. It’s horrible.

He came to quickly, and Matt helped calm me down and think straight, and realize that he’d not had a seizure, but had passed out. I laid him down on the floor (so you KNOW it was bad…I let my child lay on a hotel floor!) and put a cold cloth on his head. After a couple of minutes he felt good enough to get into his bed, as it was almost bedtime anyway, and everything was fine after that.

So I thought: scary, because it was his first lost tooth and it was pretty bloody, but that shouldn’t happen again.

tooth #1 gone, child recovered from fainting.

WRONG.

Fast-forward to sometime last fall, when Bennett’s other bottom tooth was hanging by a thread. He came home from school upset because it was hurting to eat snack, and he decided that he wanted me to pull it. I was nervous a) because even though I’m much less grossed-out by it now than I was years ago, it still is very gross and b) because of the fainting spell the previous time. But, he wanted it out, so I did it.

And I caught him again as he started to pass out.

This time it was much less dramatic of an episode than the first time – the fainting spell was much shorter, and I got him to the ground right away and got a cold washcloth on his head. He laid around for a while afterwards, but again, recovered within 20 minutes or so and you never would have known it had happened.

So when Bennett’s third loose tooth reared its ugly head, I told him I wasn’t pulling this one. He said he didn’t want me to, either.

I went back on that offer as the weeks went by with a totally dangling tooth. I seriously find that grosser than the act of pulling it. He wasn’t interested, though, preferring to eat carefully (and without complaint!) and just wait it out. I did warn him that some kids end up swallowing a tooth in the night if they let it get too loose, but he wasn’t too worried about it.

Sunday at around 3am, I was awakened by Bennett, standing excitedly at my bedside, holding his tooth. He’d woken up, wiggled it a bit, and it popped right out! I laid in bed, breathing a sigh of relief and a prayer of thanks that this went ok.

But that was a bit premature.

I sent him to the bathroom and followed him in there, where he laid his (sorry for the details – bloody) tooth on the counter while he checked out his mouth, which was not bleeding. And then he leaned down on his elbows on the counter, and the color drained from his face, and I reacted quickly enough to scoop him under the arms to prevent a collapse to the floor or a smack on the countertop.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

The collapse this time more resembled the first one more than the second one, but was still less pronounced and less scary than the time in the hotel. He was lucid again immediately, and asked to sleep on the floor of our room.

He woke up fine, of course, and eager to show people the gap in his mouth.

my friend kelly commented last night that it's sad to her when her kids lose their baby teeth, because big teeth change how they look so much. i totally agree

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I called our dentist this morning, and he felt, as I did, that this is, overall, nothing to worry about, given that he’s not passed out under other circumstances, and he recovers quickly. We all think it’s just him being freaked out…something his dad, who despises hospitals/medical procedures/etc, can relate to (not quite to this degree, though).

I also called his teacher just to let her know that this happens, should a tooth fall out at school, and we told him that if he loses a tooth and we’re not with him, it might be best to just sit down for a while so he doesn’t hurt himself in case he faints again.

No one can prepare you for stuff like this.

I hope we look back on this and laugh. I mean, we kind of are already, just not to his face right now.