Teething is tough for little babies, that's a well known fact, but it has seemed to be especially hard on our little Emmie Grace.
Our poor little girl has been getting one tooth right after the other with no real break in between. She got her bottom two teeth on Christmas and New Years Day, then a couple weeks later her top tooth (#3) came in followed by tooth number 4, and before her second top tooth (tooth number 4) was all the way through numbers 5 and 6 were on thier way up (still with me?). Now go back to tooth number 4 (her top right tooth). This little bugger seemed to be especially troublesome for little Gracie. It took such a long time to come down and was causing so much pain...
We were playing one day and she was laughing and throwing her head back. I glanced in at her teeth while she had her mouth wide open and noticed something a little different about that top right tooth... there was a little white spot right behind where the tooth was coming in. We watched it for the next few days and the spot got bigger until it finally started to come through her gums too. I was a little worried (okay, alot worried - I had never seen or heard of anything like it). It was like she had a little piece of tooth growing in right behind and perpendicular to her front tooth. When we decided that the little white thing was definitely tooth, we called the dentist immediately. (It was a Saturday so we had to wait all the way until Monday to get her in. Don't they know that we are very impatient people?!?) We really wanted to have someone look at it (or even have an x-ray done) so that we could find out what it was and at least gain a little piece of mind.
On Monday we took her in to the
pediatric dentist. He was so great. He took a look inside her mouth and, after a little thought, told us that she has what's called a "Talon Cusp" on that front tooth. It's basically an extra little piece of tooth that, when it was developing, the inner enamel was pushed outward and formed a little cusp. He said it is extremely rare and in 15+ years of practice he's only seen it a couple times. I, of course, googled everything about talon cusps when I got home (which I wouldn't recommend- there are some pretty nasty pictures of teeth out there...) and found out that a talon cusp occurs in less than 0.01% of Caucasian babies. Crazy! Her dentist said it is nothing to worry about, it won't affect her adult teeth at all, that tooth will do the same job as all of her other teeth, the only problem she might have is with nursing, and that's definitely never been a problem.
Crazy, huh? And you wouldn't even know that little cusp was back there by looking at her smile from the front. I'm just glad it's nothing serious and we don't have to have it pulled or anything drastic like that.
It's no wonder that 4th tooth was giving her so much trouble!
**Ever since our little trip to the dentist, Daddy like's to call Em his "Little Talon Cusp." I actually think it has a cute little ring to it :)
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