Don’t let her serene expression fool you, Emily has been a BEAR over the last two days due to (we think) teething pain, although I’ve yet to see any teeth. It started out on Sunday night – she woke up at 11 pm after going to bed as usual at 8. We could not get her back to sleep for hours! She’d scream and cry if I even approached the stairs (her room is upstairs). We finally gave her some motrin at about 1 am, at which point I went to bed and Jim put her down around 2:30 am! Last night she didn’t want to go to sleep at all by 8 pm even though we gave her Motrin way before bed time. She screamed in her crib for over 20 minutes and we took her downstairs. She continued to protest whenever we brought her near the stairs and finally we gave her Benadryl at 10 pm which worked. She slept from 11 pm to 10:30 am! Tonight she did protest, but she fell asleep in about 10 minutes.
I sent an email to Dr. Grayson, the orthodontist on the NYU team asking some specific teething questions because I wasn’t sure how a cleft palate can effect teething. He graciously answered them all and I think it’s good info for any parent so I’m posting it now.
Question: Emily is 16 months old and only has 4 teeth. That seems awfully late for so few teeth – should I be worried?
Answer: I would not worry at this point that Emily has only 4 teeth at 16 months. She is a little slow but not off the “cleft chart” for erruption of the baby teeth. Children with clefts are on the slow side of normal for tooth erruption (both the baby teeth and the adult teeth).
Question: Do you know if the teeth coming in can hurt a lot at this point if they are coming in weird or misshapen?
Answer: She is probably having the same or similar teething experience as her non-cleft peers, regardless of the unique shape of her errupting teeth. I have no significant reason to believe that the shape of the teeth affects the experience or pain level during erruption. (side note: Dr. Grayson is one of THE leading experts, so I trust his judgement on this)
Queston: Do you think that we should have her mouth x-rayed to see where her teeth are and/or should she be going to a pediatric dentist locally?
Answer: It is too early to take xrays of her mouth as she is most likely not cooperative enough for this procedure. Further, it is too early to do anything about the information that we would gain from xrays at this age. We will perform an xray survey of her mouth, if it is necessary to do so, at around age 4-5 years.
I believe that the national association of pediatric dentists suggests that the first visit with the pediatric dentist shoud be at around 12 months or shortly after the first few teeth have errupted. They want to establish a very early relationship with parents and patients, in order to provide the knowledge and skills for the prevention of decay.
I have scheduled Emily and Ana for a visit with a pediatric dentist in November (their first available appointment). Meanwhile, if Emily still seems uncomfortable tomorrow, we will take her to get her ears checked.
