Concerning Chloe

It's been a rough week for Chloe. I always feel like I don't give her enough "coverage" on the blog because she is smaller, and doesn't really talk much yet, but this week she got more than her share of attention.

It all stemmed from a seemingly innocuous fall last Saturday evening. She was sitting on John's lap and we were all singing Christmas carols. Losing interest in the singing, she squirmed to get down, and John let her go. Apparently, though, she wasn't quite ready and instead of landing on her feet she fell facefirst onto our hard wooden floors, landing directly on her mouth. We picked her up immediately and saw that her mouth had already begun bleeding.

At first it was hard to tell where the blood was coming from. Did she bite through her lip? Bash her tooth up into her gum? Bite her tongue? But upon closer examination, the blood seemed to be coming from the little flap of skin that connected her upper lip to her gum between her top front teeth. It was bleeding a lot, and after deciding that we didn't think she had seriously injured herself, we cleaned up the blood, and I gave her some ice to suck on as well as a bit of pain reliever, knowing she would probably be sore.

But that was just the beginning of her woes. The sore place soon developed what looked like white, infectious spots, which we think are canker sores. Apparently it's common for canker sores to result from trauma to the mouth. So her lip swelled up, and a canker sore appeared on the outside of her lip as well as on that "flap" between her top front teeth, and her gums continued to bleed with pretty much any contact. Poor Chloe!

She was really feeling miserable by then. Four or five days had elapsed since her little tumble, and she was running a high fever, not sleeping well, not eating well, and basically being a crank. Not that I can blame her, since I have had mouth sores in the past and it is truly no fun. The worst part was that I wasn't sure how to help her! Finally after talking with my pediatrician online, and sending him a mostly unhelpful picture of the spot, we hit upon a four-pronged approach: 1. Brush her teeth with a bit of toothpaste (which always causes some bleeding, and thus a need for a drink of water). 2. Spray a small amount of salt water directly on the sore spots. (Drink some more fresh water to get that salty taste out of her mouth.) 3. Apply a bit of orajel, the stuff meant for teethers. 4. Give her a bit of children's tylenol, to help the fever and the pain. (Final drink of fresh water.)

As you can probably imagine, this was not Chloe's idea of a fun time, though she does usually feel better after we've been through the whole rigamarole. In the picture above, you can see a tiny bit of how her gum/lip right around her top two front teeth is swollen. We are hopeful that another few days of treatment will help her to heal up.

The hardest thing for me has been to not give in to her every request since I know she hasn't been feeling well this week! It's hard to punish her for whining when she's obviously so uncomfortable. But, of course, it's for her good!

She hasn't lost a bit of her cuteness, though, as you can see from the above picture. Hopefully my purple girl will not be feeling so blue this next week!