Nothing but the Tooth

Ever think to yourself that "things couldn't get any worse" only to immediately realize that the universe has jinxed you for such a pessimistically naive notion? Yeah. I did that last week. On the heels of having my child call another woman "Mama" I threw my hands up to the world and thought that we couldn't possibly be teetering on the precipice of anything else that could in any way construe that I'm a terrible mother. Upon hearing that, God gave me a swift kick in the ass. On my third day of voicelessness I succumbed to the need to see a doctor who tapped my glands, chalked it up to bronchitis and prescribed some serious horse pills. Figuring it made sense to swing by the pharmacy before picking up baby C from daycare I spent the next twenty minutes hunkered in line at the neighborhood Walgreens. Whilst in line my phone rang. It was C's daycare - and, in the year he's been there, I've come to realize that whenever I'm the recipient of a call from daycare during the day I should automatically trigger the Mommy panic alarm button and commence headless chicken meltdown. This call was no different.

"Hi there, it's [Daycare]." (You know, the one your child actually calls "Mama").

My inaudible squeaking.

"You may want to get a hold of a local emergency room."

Frantic squeaking.

"So, C was out in the play yard today when he decided to pick up a piece of chalk..."

At this point I was wildly waving my hands, irate at my own inability to speak, and utterly pissed off that she couldn't see my hand signals through the phone. Get to the point Woman!  What's wrong with my son?!

"...and he tripped over his foot and fell right into the pavement. He's bleeding a little bit but he's stopped screaming..."

It's unnerving how quickly, after becoming a mother, I'm able to go from rational human being to psychopath. I'm standing at the pharmacy counter with my arms loaded with kiddie Valentine's items and I'm simultaneously envisioning gory neck wringing (How could you let this happen to my precious baby?!), sobbing in bronchital squeals into the phone while tendering money to the cashier for my antibiotics.

"...I think that he may have chipped his tooth but it's difficult to see how bad the fracture is. You're probably going to want to see an after-hours dentist for this. I think it's ok but if the fracture is bad it might break off while he's sleeping and he could choke on it..."

I proceed to do what any non-hypertensive person would do: sprint out to the car to repeatedly call my husband as though my hair was on fire and he's the only person on the planet with a bucket of water. Unable to reach him (after seventeen or so tries in a three minute period) I unknowingly leave a "frustrated" message on his voicemail. And by frustrated I mean ragingly insane. This would later be played back to me over and over...and over again by my husband as he shakes his head in that it's moments like these when I forget why I married you, you neurotic drama queen kind of way. I may be paraphrasing but I think it sounded something like:

"DAMMIT!! Dammit pick up the phone!" (Sob) "Why?! Whhhyyyyyyy?!" (only, of course, I had no voice so the sounds are coming in staccato squeaks like I have the voice of a fourteen year old boy in the throws of puberty).

When I arrived at Daycare, C seemed fine minus a little chip of tooth missing off his right front tooth. Silly me - I almost completely overreacted to a minor incident. Good thing I kept my composure!  Everything is fine...

Until I get him home, of course, where I hold him under a light to get a good look at that little chip. Hold on, is that blood? I touch the tooth ever so slightly with my pinky finger and the whole damn thing pops back like a garage door. PANIC! PANIC! PANIC! I looked like a trained responder before this moment. Now the situation has become completely bifurcated (Before: Mildy perturbed, Now: Bat*shit*crazy). I return to leaving messages on my husband's phone ("I know I said he was okay but now he isn't! We need an ambulance! We need a doctor now! 911!) as though the tooth is going to fall out and get lodged in my child's heart somehow.

Moments later my husband walks in the door bearing McDonald's. I am starting to draw a bright line between McDonald's, my husband, and serious medical pain as the last time I remember having McDonald's was on the way to the hospital, after my water had broken, on the night C was born. It was 2am and I was standing on the tile floor of a McDonald's under those florescent lights with my pants sopping wet listening to the girl behind the counter ask when I was due and my husband cheerily answer "Right now!" while my first real contraction hit. I am starting to have a Pavlov's dog reaction to McDonald's. I believe every time I see a Big Mac going forward I am going to have a panic attack.

We decide, after a lengthy call with the Emergency Room attendant, that since it would be a good 5-6 hour wait in the triage room before they even paged the on-call Dentist, to let C get some sleep and make an emergency dentist visit first thing in the morning. Up until this point, my son is looking at me like I'm nuts (which, I imagine, I will have to get used to) as he isn't in pain and is just annoyed that I'm not letting him eat any solid foods or gnaw on his sippy cup.

So, at the dentist the next day, we get the news: the tooth needs to come out. At this point I've entertained enough freak out moments that I actually take the news calmly and with dignity (minus a subtle tear or two). C has cracked the darn thing from the bottom to the top straight down the center and there's just no saving it. Who knew that they didn't make false baby teeth? They assured us that the procedure was quick and easy, just a bit of numbing and he'll be right as rain right after. Just down one front tooth.

I think every mother experiences at least one moment, likely a whole lot more, where you look to your child and tell them that you would do anything to take their place to spare them the pain. I said it right then. And God I meant it.

As promised C was in and out in only a few minutes - and we have the first tooth to hand off to the Tooth Fairy, just five or so years early. He hasn't batted an eye about the whole incident since and just looks like a rougher, tougher version of his sweet little self. It sounds stupid to admit it but there was a part of me that needed to grieve the loss of it. Of a tooth of all things. I knew from the look of it the night before that this tooth was coming out and there's a part of me that lamented that he would be different than how I was used to seeing him. But once the doc delivered the news I just sort of sucked it up for the sake of my son - because he had been so tough through the whole ordeal and because there are times when I am able to rise outside of myself and appreciate that I need to be tough, in turn, for him.

It's been over a week since all of this happened and the funny thing is...I haven't been tempted to bemoan our 'poor luck' or to assure myself that nothing worse could happen. Not because I'm afraid of the "wink and snap" jinx from the universe but because I'm damn lucky that I'm as fortunate as I am. That we're as fortunate as we are. I do have a little more perspective now. Because he could've fallen and broken his nose or cracked his head open. Because of a lot of things. So, I derived a little truth from the tooth. And of all things, this admitted pessimist is trying to look on the bright side :)