I have hated since the beginning that we live in a place with all tile floors, and ever since little EC became mobile I’ve tried various strategies to keep her in padded areas so that she can learn to move without damaging herself. But once she got enough practice and got pretty good at moving about, I’ve loosened up and let her explore. Today, though, she took a very short fall (no more than three or four inches) and faceplanted into the tile.

She has hit her chin like that before, and there was no problem beyond the initial crying. Today, though, she must have fallen right on one of her new teeth. She has a little bit of a bloody upper lip—not even enough for the blood to flow, though. So it wasn’t obvious that anything else had happened, until she started smiling again and we could see that one of her two front teeth was discolored where it meets the gums. It’s hard to tell if it’s all a tooth discoloration, or if it’s also a gum discoloration…she really won’t let us take much of a look at it. The tooth isn’t loose, and biting with it doesn’t seem to cause her any pain (as my finger learned while probing).

Apparently this sort of thing commonly causes a tooth to completely discolor, and it may or may not go back to being white. Baby teeth can recover, whereas adult teeth more often die and have to be removed. Because it wasn’t much of a hit, we’ll keep an eye on it and see if the discoloration spreads or if she has any more pain. We haven’t taken her to the dentist, since it sounds like they would just prescribe the same course of action. If she has any other problems at all, we’ll take her in.

I suspect that we have not seen the last of tile-related injuries.