Gabe bites his tongue (literally!)

Monday, while I was filling his juice/water bottle, Gabe was crawling towards the living room on the hardwoods. I guess he tripped or something because he landed on his chin somehow and bit into his tongue very badly. I glanced at him and heard him start to cry at about the same time and knew that it was not a normal cry. I picked him up and there was blood that seemed to gush out of his mouth (and probably a good amount of drool, but still). At first, I thought he busted his teeth out, but after not seeing any teeth on the floor, I realized he must have bitten his tongue.

Anyway, functionally, outwardly, I was trying to stop the bleeding and comfort him. Inside my head, I am like, "Aaaaack!!!" The bleeding stopped in less than 2 minutes, after 10 minutes, he forgot about it and was wanting to play. However, I had to a) check to see if he bit through his tongue and b) check the wound to see how bad it was.

Meanwhile, I called his Dr. and they told me (his own Dr. had left for the day, I talked to another) that if the bleeding stopped and he had not bitten through his tongue, to leave it be and skip the ER. After getting a good look at it, I determined that it was bad, but it was not an emergency since he indeed did not bite through his tongue and was not bleeding like it was when it first happened.

After things settled down, I told Craig at work. When he got home, he got worried, especially when he saw some spot bleeding still. So both of us were trying to determine if we needed to take him to the ER anyway. The problem was that the wound was trying to clot and heal, but through various means, he kept re-opening it, i.e., putting his hands in his mouth, gnawing on toys, etc., totally oblivious. We figured that after he went to sleep, and let it clot over during the night without interruptions, the wound would be closed enough by the morning to not be reopened as easily.

So that was the case. By Tuesday morning, it already started turning white (wounds in the mouth turn white as they heal). Here is a pic:



After reading online about the many children and adults that bite their tongues, I found that mouth wounds heal pretty quickly and rarely get infected because of the rich blood supply and saliva is apparently antiseptic, antibacterial or something to that nature. I will still watch him, but even today, Wednesday, it is looking even better.

Stressful start to the week!