Goodbye, Baby Teeth

A few weeks ago Elena last her first tooth.  About twenty-five minutes later, she lost her second.  I am blogging about it because it was a uniquely challenging ordeal.  Her autism made it so.  We were monitoring her mouth for well over a month.  Her teeth had been promising to come out all summer, slowly getting looser and looser as the weeks passed. 

I was the parent at home when it really began to happen.  She is still fairly nonverbal when it comes to things like this, so she clued me into that she was about to lose them by taken my hand and putting it in her mouth to pull them.  It was then when I realized it was going to be two teeth, as her two lower front teeth felt like they were pointing due west towards Venice Beach. 


We sat on the floor, quietly, as she played on the iPad, allowing me to move her teeth back and forth to get them as loose as I could before trying to pull them out.  She as getting bored and a bit frustrated and went and got me her tooth brush so I could brush them out.  She's smart, that girl of mine. 

To be honest, her mom is better at these things than I am, as I would have been content to spend the next six hours sitting there trying to gently ease the teeth out of her head.  I used the toothbrush and it seemed to be working, but afternoon was becoming evening, and I didn't want her going to bed with those teeth the way they were.  So I text mom to hurry home as soon as she could.  She had a job to do.  She had just pulled Nicholas' tooth the day before. She was in the zone.

The more autistic children I meet the more I am convinced that most of them, if not all of them, have a very high tolerance for pain.  With Elena, her verbal deficiencies make it difficult to ascertain just how much pain she is feeling.  My instincts were that she was in more pain than she was showing.  I mean, she just didn't look happy.

We were trying to explain what was going to happen.  This was her first tooth, so of course she was anxious.  She wanted us to do it, but was anxious when it came down to actually pulling it out.  Heck, I was really anxious when I had one of my molars pulled when I was in grad school, and I was on Novocaine!  We knew she was starting to feel agitated, and we did our best to reassure her that it would hurt only for a little bit. 

After a few false starts and some good half-cries and arm flaps, the first tooth came out.  She was tearfully relieved, and probably a bit shocked to feel just gum where there used to be tooth.  We knew she felt better, but knew there was still one more tooth to go.  So did she, and wasn't all that amused to have to get up and do it again, but she did.  So she bravely got up and we did it again.  And soon we had two.

We had put to notify the Tooth Fairy the week before, letting her know that soon she'd be called to duty.  We sent her a text to let her know that Elena had not just lost her first tooth, but she also just lost her second tooth.  She took it all in stride, or in her case, in flight, and texted back that she was prepared for any and all baby teeth contingencies.  Elena, apparently, isn't the first kid to lose her first two teeth within minutes of each other.  She reminded us to tell Elena that she was very brave and to thank her for letting mom and dad help her get her teeth out.

Our Tooth Fairy understands that our two special little ones just don't get that excited about money.  So understands that placing paper money of any denomination under a pillow will mean absolutely nothing to any person around here ages 7 and under.  She has to go the extra mile when dropping by this ASD household, often stocking up ahead of time with an item here and there from the Tooth Fairy Target -- hopefully something more suited to the needs of special little children.  She picks up so much stuff that when she gets here, all she has to do is fly around dad's closet and look in the good hiding places.

Good thing dad got rid of his old magazines. 

Luckily she knows the kids around here very well, and was able to secure out of dad's T-shirt drawer a very appropriate item in exchange for two newly lost but really cute baby teeth in very good condition.  Our Tooth Fairy recycles, taking the lost teeth and giving them to the new babies being born the next day, so she was very excited to be getting two very awesomely cute little girl teeth to pass on.  We got a very cool, forward-thinking, eco-conscious Tooth Fairy that way.

Elena was a real champ.  She has had a lot to deal with these last few months, with her school placement and the mess that made of her life for about a month.  This came right as she was settling into her new, "new" school, with the new schedule, new bus, and new routines.  She has held it all together, though, through all of this -- better than most typical adults I know.  She is an amazing soul.  She never ceases to surprise us.  And, teeth or no teeth, we love her more than earth.