Lots of Dental Visits in our Future

Madelyn had her first dental appointment today with a pediatric dentist. Our pediatrician had recommended we go to have the structure of her mouth evaluated plus to get his input on her tongue issues.


The dentist confirmed she does have a large tongue for being a two year old. He said right now there's nothing we can do about it. It's going to hang out because she is a mouth breather due to her allergies. He did saw down on several teeth that had sharp points hoping to prevent the bleeding when she bites her tongue at night. She did not like this since she had to be held down for it but it was painless. He said she would probably continue to suck on it at night for now. He did say later on (years from now) if it does cause other problems like with her speech, there are surgeries that can be done to remove some of the sides of the tongue to make it smaller but this will be discussed much later on.


She does have a really bad underbite. I knew this going in but didn't see how bad it really was until he and his assistant pulled back on the sides of mouth and closed her jaw. Again, there's nothing that can be done at this age for this. He said whether the tongue caused the underbite or the underbite was always there, we'll probably never know, but her large tongue does contribute to pushing her bottom jaw out more along with being a mouth breather.


They couldn't clean her teeth but they did scrape some tarter off. She had some soft spots on a few teeth they will look at again in six months. For now he said just to avoid sugar and juices.