“Shark Tooth” – shark tooth is not just a name that I dubbed my son for reasons I’m about to share, but it’s actually a medical term that his dentist introduced into our vocabulary.  It’s apparently a phenomena that’s pretty common and can especially occur in kids with Down Syndrome.

So, besides being an interesting term, it’s actually due to the fact that some kids don’t wobble their teeth and the new bigger teeth starts to grow out behind mainly the frontal teeth.  This creates a similar appearance as on sharks, where the teeth are sitting in rows – obviously not intended to be used as on sharks, where they bite hard.

Over time, the smaller baby teeth will fall out themselves, as they lose their grip, but sometimes they have to be pulled.  Now, I clearly remember when I had to get a tooth pulled out, and that was a VERY uncomfortable experience.  The dentist literally digs into his toolbox, finds the smallest set of pliers and yank the tooth out in one go.  BLOODY PAINFUL!

– it probably didn’t help that I didn’t get much gas as I was super nervous.

We did try to wobble his tooth and it did become looser over time.  But, it wasn’t enough, so we decided to get him gassed up and ask the doctor to pull it.  Unfortunately our son, who at that time had received his max dosage of gas, was still in the fighting spirit, so the doctor could not get a proper grip on the tooth.

Every night, before going to bed, we would “attack” our son and attempt to wobble it lose.  He would obviously fight us tooth and nail (literally), and we were making little progress.

Then one evening, while I was getting him ready for bed, i quickly poked my finger in his mouth and wobbled the tooth in question.  Backwards – forwards and snap, I had the tooth in my fingers.  I dropped it on the floor out of utter amazement.

Yes, it bleeds a little when you drop a tooth, and he was not happy with my achievement.  In fact, he pushed me away and ran into his room, jumping into bed.

I didn’t leave the tooth underneath his pillow for the tooth-fairy as I was afraid he would either eat the tooth or throw it away.  This also meant the tooth-fairy hasn’t arrived yet as she can’t find the little gem.

Believe it or not, within 3 days of dropping his first tooth, his other baby tooth front teeth disappeared.  He most likely swallowed it during the night, as it’s nowhere to be found.

As a result, he’s no longer shark tooth, but toothless 🙂