Tips for child dental surgery recovery please!

[Mrsjohnsmith]

My DS (9) is having dental surgery in a week’s time to have three teeth removed (supernumerary extra ones!). The surgery will be done under general anaesthetic, and he should be in and out in a day.

The appointment letter said to have pain relief on hand when we get home, so I’ve stocked up on Calpol, but is there anything else can I do to make his recovery more comfortable? Does anyone know how long it’s likely he’ll be in pain for?

I’ll get lots of smoothies and yoghurts and soups for easy nutrition, and make sure I buy a few new puzzles/games to keep him entertained. Anyone been through it and have any good tips? Thanks in advance!

Potentially you’ll need more than calpol. You’ll need ibuprofen too. DS had a wisdom tooth out under sedation a couple of weeks ago, it got infected and he needed very strong pain relief and antibiotics. That’s worse case though. It took him over a week to recover.

Definitely ibroprofen and avoid rice, that’s what got into my wisdom tooth hole. Dry socket is incredibly painful but not everyone gets it, i didn’t last time

I had 4 molars removed (40+yrs ago) at 10yrs to make room as I needed a brace. Had them out under 'gas ' at the dentist!
I can't really recall that much pain, first teeth dont have such big roots i think, hated the feel of the gaps, vleaning teeth need delicate prevision. I had yoghurt, ice pops, lukewarm tea etc and paracetamol and TLC which wasn't the norm in our house.

When i had my wisdom teeth out (all 4 at once) the pain was unbearable. Had much stronger painkillers, still didn't help but did the above again and also a warm hot water bottle to hold on cheeks.

Hope he manages fine. Its not great x

I had about 7 such teeth removed, at the same time as two wisdom teeth (impacted) and two back molars (to make room in my jaw for emerging wisdom teeth), at the age of 15.
I suspect it was the big teeth that caused the main pain and problems - I seemed to have swallowed a lot of blood during the op, and combined with the GA I was very sick.
I had a lot of pain and swelling and couldn't eat the hospital food so kept passing out, so they wouldn't discharge me. In the end my mum brought in home cooked food that I could eat, just to get me home! Hopefully with no major extractions, things will be a lot simpler for your DS.
Definitely stick with very smooth food - even pureed stuff got stuck in the stitches (because of the location of the small teeth, I had stitches in the sides of my gums too).
I would recommend cold ice cream, smooth yogurt, clear soup.

Hi OP, I had several teeth taken out when I was 13 (some baby teeth and some adult teeth in preparation for braces). I had a general anaesthetic but they also injected local anaesthetic whilst I was under. I was totally numb from my nose downwards and I found it really challenging to drink due to this. In the end, I was squirting drink from a sports bottle as I was too nervous to use a normal cup or suck from a bottle. I couldn't feel my mouth until the next day, so this might be something worth keeping in mind - several choices for drinking. It might have been psychological, but it was something that really threw me!

My DS (14) had two impacted canines taken out under GA last summer. He was very sore for 3-4 days and his face swelled up a lot. Paracetamol on its own wasn't enough for the first few days, he needed to alternate it with ibuprofen in between. Pain reduced from about day 4 and after a week he was off the pain killers altogether and back to normal.

We were told to do regular salt water rinses as well to keep everything clean, but not to start those until 24 hours after the surgery to avoid dislodging the clot.

Our surgeon said some kids are ready to go back to school in a couple of days. Best of luck to your son, hope he has a quick recovery

Oh my goodness there are some scary experiences here!! He’s not having any molars or wisdom teeth removed, just front ones, so hopefully that’ll help a tiny bit pain-wise….
I’ll make sure I get ibuprofen too, and he likes Lucozade sport so that might be a good alternative if he can’t eat for a while or is numb…..I’m thinking the squirty bottles might be useful!

forewarned is forearmed, so I appreciate all these replies!