When Your Toddler Needs Baby Teeth Removed: My Experience and I’m Looking for Your Stories
The plastic slide in the pediatric dental surgery waiting room has a crack running down its right side, sticky from years of goldfish crumbs and popsicle juice. My 2-year-old Lila was wedged half under it, picking at a loose piece of blue plastic, while I twisted the crumpled general anesthesia consent form so hard the edges tore. Six months earlier, she’d tripped over our curb face-first while learning to run, and her top front right tooth turned gray within a week. By the time we saw a specialist, the infection had spread to the root and the adjacent tooth had hidden early decay. The only option was to remove both.
I remember scrolling my phone while I waited, seeing a post from another mom in my local parenting group asking the same question I’d typed into Google for weeks: Has anyone had their toddler’s baby teeth removed? The top comments were all “My kids never had that, you must be going to a bad dentist” or a one-line horror story about a 10-year-old’s wisdom teeth removal. No one talking about a 2-year-old, no one talking about the days after, the small unglamorous stuff that no doctor lists on a pamphlet.
When they called me back, Lila was still half asleep on the procedure chair, her little top lip puffed out like a balloon, a tiny piece of gauze tucked between her gums. I carried her out to the car, and she napped the whole way home, snoring into my shoulder. I cried in the driveway after we got home, not because the procedure went wrong, but because I felt stupid and guilty. I’d let her fall asleep with a bottle of water once in a while after she got sick, I’d missed brushing some nights when we were out traveling, I thought this was all my fault. No one I knew had gone through this with a kid so young, so I had no one to tell me that guilt is just part of the deal here, even when it’s not your fault.
The first three days were harder than any sleep regression or terrible two tantrum I’d navigated before. The dentist sent us home with pain meds and a list of suggestions that didn’t work: frozen teething rings made her gums ache more, cold smoothies made her cry. I ended up figuring out that room temperature scrambled eggs, mashed avocado, and plain yogurt pouches were the only things she’d eat. I swapped her soft-bristled toothbrush for silicone finger wipes the first week, because brushing hurt too bad, and that worked way better than any of the suggestions I found online.
The thing that panicked me most was the speech change. Lila was just starting to string little words together, saying “more cookie” and “bye bye dada” before the procedure. After her gums healed, she developed a thick lisp, couldn’t pronounce any words with s or t sounds. She’d point at the sky and say “thun!” and I’d feel my chest tighten, because I had no idea if this was permanent, if I’d need to get her speech therapy, if the tooth removal had messed something up. My dentist said it was just swelling and would go away, but Google only had info for 5-year-olds with tongue thrusts, not toddlers.
I didn’t correct her. I didn’t say “say sun, not thun” or make her repeat words. I just repeated what she said back to her, normally. If she said “thun out!” when she wanted to go outside, I said “Yeah, let’s go play out in the sun!” That’s it. Six weeks later, the lisp is already getting softer. She says “sun” right half the time now. I think that just giving her time instead of pushing made a big difference.
For a week after she got used to the gap, she’d cover her mouth every time she laughed. I made the mistake of making a big deal out of it at first, telling her her smile was so cute, which just made her cover it more. Once I stopped mentioning it entirely, she stopped caring. When a little girl at the playground pointed at her mouth last week and asked where her teeth were, Lila just said “owwie gone” and ran off to climb the slide, like it was no big deal.
I’ve asked around to my mom friends, posted in three different parenting groups, and only two people have gotten back to me, both with one-line replies saying everything turned out fine. I get that, I hope everything turns out fine for us too. But I want the messy parts. I want to know what you wish you’d known before you went in. I want to know if your toddler’s speech went back to normal, how long it took. I want to know if their adult teeth came in crooked, if you had to do anything extra to prep for that. I want to know what snacks worked for you that no doctor told you about.
If you’re sitting in that waiting room right now, twisting your own consent form, the small things that helped me that I didn’t see anywhere else: skip the frozen foods, stick to room temperature soft options the first few days. Don’t correct a new lisp, just repeat words back normally. Don’t make the gap a big deal, even if you’re emotional about it. That’s it, that’s all the small stuff that made this easier for us.
Lila’s napping on the couch next to me right now, her gap on full display because she sleeps with her mouth open. We still have four more years at least before her adult front teeth come in. There’s a lot of waiting, a lot of small questions that don’t have answers yet. I know I can’t be the only parent who’s been here, navigating this weird, quiet little thing that no one talks about. If your toddler had teeth removed, I’d love to hear your story.
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