MichaelZullo.com

Sooooooooo a few weeks ago Mikey got into an accident at daycare. He was riding a tricycle around the playground and another kid bumped into him. He hit his mouth on the bar of the trike and had a bad cut and bruise on his lower lip. It looked ugly but he healed and was fine.

Fast forward to a few days ago when Gary noticed one of Mikey’s top front teeth that looked discolored. I looked at it and couldn’t really tell. Well when I was at the pediatrician’s office on Monday to get his flu shots I had him on my lap and I start tickling him and he leaned back and was laughing so I got a good look into his mouth again and noticed that the back side of that tooth looked like it was bruised in a way. I googled “toddler bruise tooth” which was the wrong thing to do because I see baby root canal and damage to adult tooth and blah blah blah. So I stopped and said I’d take him to the dentist to find out for sure. I made an appointment for him with a GREAT pediatric dentist! I wanted a pediatric dentist because they’d make Mikey more comfortable since all they do is deal with kids all day long, and what a GREAT decision that was!!

I took him this morning and they were very nice to him. He was scared and cried while they gently cleaned his teeth, by the end he was whining and looking around, clearly not scared. They did an x-ray of his teeth to check out the root of the tooth in question and his adult teeth as well to make sure that it didn’t get damaged. He got fluoride paste put on his teeth too, and I was told to keep him on the fluoride free toothpaste until he’s 3.

The doc came in and looked over his teeth and looked at the x-ray and said that thankfully there was no nerve damage and his permanent teeth look good. She even showed me his adult teeth on the x-ray. *Sniff* My little man has adult teeth growing.

His tooth could possibly get darker, or if a capillary grows back it could start to lighten up again if it gets enough oxygen, but it isn’t a big deal and he’ll be fine just as long as he doesn’t get an infection or abscess which I need to look out for when I brush his teeth.

So overall a GREAT 1st visit. Now begins a lifetime of dentist visits every 6 months for my big kid.

I was going to wait to get Mikey’s first real dentist visit until he was 3 because everything I read said to wait until then, but change of plans. A few weeks ago Mikey got into an accident at school where he was bumped when he was on a trike. He hurt his lip pretty bad, but it never occurred to me that he could have had damage to his teeth. Well the other day Gary pointed out that one of Mikey’s top teeth looked discolored. I looked at it but didn’t really notice it until when I had him on my lap and made him laugh my tickeling him and was able to see his teeth better and the backside of the tooth definitely looks discolored. Almost like the tooth is bruised. I did what I normally do and that is pull up google and see what I could find. Let’s just say you really should stay away from self-diagnosing because you never pull up good news. I saw baby root canal and decided I’m not going to look it up anymore. I’ll take him to a dentist and let them tell me what is wrong and if there is anything to worry about. So his first appointment is tomorrow morning with a pediatric dentist. I’m hoping he’ll do well with having a stranger look into his mouth. *crossing fingers* I tell you its always something!

And one word O-U-C-H. Mikey is absolutely MISERABLE with this one tooth. He hardly wants to eat or really drink. I’ve seen this behavior before and good thing is I know its absolutely normal. I’m just ready for this teething thing to be done. But we are almost there. Who would have thought that we’d be *THIS* close to the end of teething. The end is indeed in sight. Hey bright side…..he doesn’t tilt when he’s cutting a tooth anymore, now THAT is good news!

Things have been hectic over here the past few weeks so I haven’t had much of a chance to come update Mikey’s blog. I’m finalizing our little mini-vacation to Disney, we leave this Friday. And now I’m planning our trip to Washington D.C. so that Gary can get some much needed medical tests done at NIH.

As for Mikey he’s doing ok. He got all 4 of his canine’s at once so its been a lot of FUN! He is also having some major temper tantrums, especially in the car on our hour drive home from work. I finally resorted to buying us a portable dvd player and that thing has been a life-saver!!!!

This morning we had our follow-up appointment with his specialist for the torticollis. Of course of ALL days he chooses TODAY to tilt to his left. He hasn’t tilted to his left in MONTHS!!!!! And today he chooses to do it! The doctor felt his neck and had him walk up and down the hall. He has a slight tilt, I can’t deny it. The doc said that its still pretty mild and he would not recommend botox right now. He wants to wait until Mikey is 18 months old before we even revisit that. He said continue with PT, stretches at home, and attempt to use the TOT collar.

I was so ready to end this long journey but it just seems like it keeps going on and on and on. We have PT this afternoon and I’m going to talk to the therapist about what the doc said. She is actually ready to release Mikey from PT so I’m curious to see what she says about all of this.

Figured I’d combine everything into one post to make it easier for me.

First….Turns out Mikey just had a very mild reaction to the chicken pox vaccine. All of his spots pretty much have disappeared by this morning. There are no new ones which is good. He’s at daycare because he’s not contagious since there are no open sores.

Second….He’s just got teeth #13 and 14, his canines! Both have cut through his gums over the weekend. I’m surprised it didn’t cause him to much grief. Hopefully the rest of the two teeth aren’t too painful for him as they are coming up.

Third….today begins his transition to the toddler room!!! He officially goes over at 9:30! I’m going to go down and peek on him while he’s at the playground with the big kids when they go out at 10:30. I’m way excited about this. I really hope he does so well that they realize how stupid it would be to keep him in the infant room any longer.

I’ll make sure to update later once I know how he did on his first day. He’ll only be there for an hour or two so its not a full day.

Somehow amongst all of the fussiness I was able to get a pic of Mikey giving a HUGE smile. Afterwords while looking through the pics I took I noticed that the one with the huge smile showed his big ole molar.

Here’s the pic:

So after this CRAZY week of fevers and Mikey’s first molar coming up yesterday I took a peek in his mouth while he was laughing at something and to my surprise I see two of his upper molars getting ready to pop through the gums. This is soooooooo not right! I was hoping for some kind of break to get our happy Mikey back but nope apparently his teeth have a mind of their own. No wonder he’s still been acting fussy the past couple of days. Thankfully he is fever free right now. Hopefully he learned how bad the pain is from the first one so that he’s not that surprised with these new two molars. Eeeeeeek!

So this past weekend Mikey was acting fussier than normal. I gave him tylenol a couple of times to help soothe him, but it wasn’t too unmanageable. Today we got up at 6 like we normally do on the days I go into the office. The entire hour long commute he was sitting in the backseat whimpering. I knew something wasn’t quite right. Since I had my trusty bottle of tylenol as soon as I parked the car I gave him a dose of tylenol figuring that’ll take care of him. We went upstairs to my “office” and I changed him out of his pj’s and gave him his bottle. He gave me a hassle with his bottle but he has been doing that a lot lately so I didn’t think anything of it. We went downstairs to daycare at 7:30 and I put him in the highchair and gave him his pancakes. As I was leaving he turned and it looked like he was going to start crying but his teachers were able to distract him.

So I went up to work thinking he’s fine no big deal, I’ll see him in a couple of hours anyways. I get a call an hour later and they tell me he’s been crying hysterically the entire time and they wanted to know if he has been like this all weekend. I told them he was miserable but not too bad and that I had given him tylenol at 7 so I can’t give it again until 11. I also told them if they needed me to just call me back and I’d come down. Well not even half an hour later the phone rings again, its daycare, they ask if I can come down because he’s shaking and feeling cold and still crying.

I get down there and he’s crying like crazy in clear P-A-I-N! For some reason the tylenol did NOTHING for him in 2 hours!!!!!! I was able to hold him and calm him down but he’d fall asleep in my arms whimpering in his sleep. I felt so bad. They had taken his temperature (while crying) and he had a fever of 101.8. So I handed him off to a teacher so that I could run upstairs to collect my things and I made a quick call to the doc to get us an appt.

We immediately left to the doctor and they looked him over and even did a CBC but nothing came up. The doctor we saw said it couldn’t be teething since the fever was high. It was 102 but once again they took it after he had been crying. When he cries he makes himself hot so if he has even a low-grade fever he makes himself hotter. Makes sense to me and I didn’t go to medical school! So the doc said it could be some kind of virus and to keep giving him tylenol/motrin if needed.

I’m convinced its NOT a virus and that it is just his molar trying to finish coming in. The complete front of the molar is threw and its a HUGE tooth! The back is slightly through but the entire mid-section still needs to come up. And that has gotta hurt. I mean just me thinking about it makes my gums hurt!!! Poor baby. He’s still feeling miserable and I just gave him another dose of motrin and now he’s sound asleep in his crib napping!

What sucks is this is only the first molar to come in…..that means we get to go through this a lot more! EEEEEEeeeeeeeek!

Mikey has had 7 teeth for a little over a month now. For the past week he has been showing signs of teething with tilting and being cranky and not wanting to drink all of his milk from a bottle. Oh and forget puree’s he can’t stand soft foods, which is odd but whatever floats his boat.

Well I’d put orajel where I thought the new tooth was coming. Logically since he only had 3 teeth on the bottom I figured it would be tooth next to his right bottom central incisor oh no I was VERY VERY wrong. For the hell of it I decided to feel around his mouth, when he allowed me to, and I noticed on his left bottom side the gums were flattening out and there was a bump where a molar would be. Well he has finally allowed me to take an extended peek into his mouth and low and behold you can see a corner of his molar cutting through. He hasn’t been in pain for the past couple of days and I’m hoping it stays that way as the rest of the tooth works its way up. But OUCH, its gotta hurt!!

We had all intentions of having a nice relaxing long weekend starting with taking off from work on Thursday but why would things go the way WE want them to!?!?!? Everything was great up until 4:30 on Thursday when Mikey woke up from his nap. At first he was his normal cheerful self. Full of smiles and laughs. Got to the living room and sat him on the floor with his toys while I got his bottle ready. Then all hell broke loose. He started wailing like he has never wailed before. This loud cry with a grunt. After 15 minutes of it I figured it had to be one of his teeth that are trying to come through so I gave him some tylenol and tried to feed him. It took an hour to give him his 6oz bottle.

After an hour of giving him tylenol he was still wailing and grunting. I immediately thought he must be super constipated and it must be hard for him to push it out. So before I called the pediatrician I took his temp and it was up to 101, but I figured it had to be from all of his crying making him hot. They told me to bring him in immediately. We waited and waited, like we always do over there! We are seriously considering switching doctors because of this crap. The doc looked him over, did a CBC, and a urine sample and nothing came up. He said it could be teething related or it could be the beginnings of a virus and to see how he does the next few days.

Well for the most part Friday was ok except he started getting super cranky that night. On Saturday he woke up feverish so I started giving him tylenol. He then turned super cranky again with his grunting cries so I would alternate with motrin. Nothing was working though. He couldn’t nap because he was so irritable, so because of that we decided to run our errands anyways. Of course our last stop was Publix and by then he was exhausted from not being able to sleep. So we put him in his stroller instead of in the cart and he cried and cried and cried. Eventually daddy had to take him out of the stroller and carry him around the store pushing the stroller. Poor baby would cry in his sleep from being so uncomfortable.

It was a challenge to get him to fall asleep that night but we finally got him down. Found out that around 1:30am he woke himself up and daddy was still awake so he picked him up and brought him to the living room and he passed out on his chest until daddy woke up around 4 and put him back in his crib. I had no idea this went on but at 5:30 Mikey woke up wailing so I ran to his room and he was HOT. I took his temp and it was up to 103 so I took off his pj’s and threw him in a bath to cool him off. Then dressed him in a onesie to go back to sleep. He managed to sleep until 8 and then we started the cranky/crying/grunting/fever thing all over on Sunday.

So here we are Monday morning. Mikey should be in daycare right now and I should be at the office. But nope we are both home. Why? Because he’s still running a fever, it was 100.4 again this morning. And he’s still super cranky and fussy. Thankfully I’m able to work from home so I’m doing that. I called up his doctor immediately at 8am to talk to the nurse and she recommended that we go back in so we have an appointment today at 1:30. Hopefully his doctor can give us a better insight as to what’s bother the poor little guy.