This past week sweet little Makenna has been put through some no fun changes. She has been sick with a cold & fevers and on top of that had a spacer retainer placed in her mouth. Life hasn’t been super fun. At her first dentist appointment last July, the dentist noticed that her top palate is too small, so her top teeth actually rest inside of her bottom teeth rather than the other way around (mostly in the back - she doesn’t have an under bite). Over the course of several appointments they took a mold of her mouth, had a retainer spacer made custom for her & that retainer was recently cemented to her back molars. Over the next couple weeks it will push her back teeth out, splitting her top palate apart so that it’s wide enough. Then the retainer stays in place for 6 months (bummer!) over which time her body will rebuild new bone to fill in the gap. That way by the time they take it out, her teeth will stay in place & hopefully avoid bigger problems in the future. I’m crossing my fingers that by taking care of it while she’s so young, it won’t be as big of a deal as if we had waited. However, the hard part of her being young is that she doesn’t really understand why she has to have it, what it is doing & how long it has to stay in.
I now have a brand new appreciation for anyone who has had a child with medical problems - it is so hard when they don’t understand! When we went in to have the retainer placed, it wasn’t the most pleasant experience and it took a lot of effort for me not to cry. It started with the assistant testing the fit of the retainer in Kenna’s mouth. Anyone who knows Makenna knows that she has a VERY over-reactive gag reflex & when the assistant’s fingers went a little too close to the back of her mouth, she threw up. Unfortunately she was laying down so the vomit pooled by her neck, in the back of her shirt & in her hair. We ended up having to take her undershirt off leaving her in a short-sleeved vomit-smelling shirt. Afterward Kenna kept whispering to me, “I don’t want them to put it in for real.” It broke my heart! When the dentist came & officially cemented it in, he had to do a lot of shoving and it was pretty painful. That’s when I just about lost it. I was holding Kenna’s hands & as tears rolled down her cheeks she was staring into my eyes with a look like “why don’t you stop them, Mom?” It was awful! She was very brave through the whole thing, kept her mouth open & only cried briefly, but I was sure choked up.
Since then Makenna’s mouth has been pretty sore. Anyone who has had braces tightened can relate to the pain with chewing when your teeth are in the process of moving. Poor Kenna has been on pretty much a liquid diet since Wednesday and mealtimes have been quite the challenge. After many tears & trial and error, we’ve found some foods that she will eat; cottage cheese, yogurt, applesauce, jell-o, mashed potatoes etc. Pretty exciting, huh? And unfortunately the soreness will probably last a couple weeks. I can imagine those foods are going to get old really quickly! The other bummer is how it effects her speech. Again, if you’ve ever worn a retainer, you know how funny it sounds at first! Kenna can’t say the “ch”, “sh”, “s”, “g” sounds or anything else that requires your tongue to be against the roof of your mouth. It’s so hard when your daughter says with tears in her eyes, “Mom I can’t sing with this thing in my mouth”. I sure hope she gets used to it quickly & that it ends up being worth all of this! We’ve tried to make it a more “special” experience with treats like chocolate milk & Nate took her on a special date the night after she had it placed. They went to the grocery store & he bought her flowers and let her pick out a special treat. What a sweet dad!
Anyway, I just want to say how proud I am of my brave little girl. She’s been a trooper and I’m very grateful that she is so patient and trusting. Hang in there Makenna, we love you!!
The culprit of all of this fun
Our happy girl with the flowers she picked out
Makenna with her daily dose of jell-o
Poor Kenna! Your post actually made me think of Susie...she DOES have an underbite, though I've never noticed if her molars have the same issue. I was telling Landon about McKenna's spacer, and he informed me that he had one too! I had no idea! So who knows what will happen with Susie! Hope the six months goes by quickly for McKenna! And you!
ReplyDeleteOh Brooke! I know how you feel, seeing your child in pain; and that look of "Why aren't you stopping them?!?" We've had that tough experience with Tara a couple of times :( So I guess I wanted to say-Hang in there momma!
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