Zack has the same problem Laralee and Alex do: he doesn’t have any permanent canines in his mouth. So he has baby teeth that don’t have anything above them, and they’ll never get pushed out of his gums. That’s not entirely bad– Laralee was over 40 when we finally had those two baby teeth removed as part of her whole braces saga. But we had Alex’s removed, and the orthodontist was able to shift some things around with Alex’s braces to make his mouth look good. Now it’s Zack’s turn.
The dentist told Zack he could attempt to pull the tooth himself by wiggling it over the span of a month or two. Since it’s just a baby tooth, working on it can eventually loosen it so it can be pulled. That would save us the $80 extraction fee for the dentist to remove it. So Zack worked at it– every time he was watching a movie or reading a book, he’d be tugging at this tooth. But he didn’t feel like he was really getting anywhere.
Yesterday he visited the dentist to have some cavities filled, and Laralee decided to go ahead and have the tooth extracted. As it turns out, it seems unlikely Zack would have been able to pull it himself by just wiggling it:
That little sucker had a root that was about 3/4″ long! It wasn’t going anywhere…