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18mo gum hanging off (picture)

4 replies

SpicyMoth · 28/03/2026 21:52

No idea if I'm posting in the right place or not, but just wanted a bit of advice really!

Yesterday my 18mo DS cut his gum right above his front tooth - it bled a fair bit, but stopped, we took him to the dentist to be on the safe side as we're first time parents and just wanted to be sure nothing nasty happened to the tooth.

All seemed mostly fine, dentist was reassuring, though the cut was a nasty one.

Skip to this afternoon and DS has managed to tear the wound open again. Won't let me look at it all day, though eating and drinking fine and not fussy. (And to be fair he hates anyone going near his face to even wipe it, let alone look at his teeth)

Just got him off to sleep and managed to get a full look at it, and the cut is gone, and instead his gum is hanging off, pretty hefty chunk along the line of where the cut was 🙃

It's of course going to be Sunday tomorrow, so our dentist is closed (I swear medical things always seem to happen on weekends in our family where you cant be seen!) and I'm not really sure what to do from here apart from just try and make sure my son isn't uncomfortable?

Is it as bad as it looks? How urgent is the dentist? Do I need to be looking for an amergency appointment in the morning?

I know it probably looks like a small flap of gum in the pic, but the cut was quite high up the gum when it first happened and his teeth are only small, so its a bit hard to tell imo, but I could also be just worrying too much

18mo gum hanging off (picture)
OP posts:
NoArmaniNoPunani · 29/03/2026 03:27

Did he have a lip tie? Looks like the cut might have been due to the tie and now you're seeing what remains from it

SpicyMoth · 29/03/2026 10:36

@NoArmaniNoPunaninot as far as I know! Dentists, Doctors and Health Visitors never mentioned it as a possibility for him and he breastfed really well - I'll give it a Google and look into it though, as I'm not really sure what it would look like, it was definitely on the gum over the front tooth though if that makes any difference?

OP posts:
NoArmaniNoPunani · 29/03/2026 11:09

Lip tie is different from tongue tie so wouldn't necessarily affect bf or be mentioned by health professionals

SpicyMoth · 29/03/2026 11:26

Thanks so much, just finished having a look and chatting to DH and it looks awfully similar, though maybe a little less severe than the Google pics - honestly DS may well have lip toe AND a gum injury at this point! He does also have speech delay too, which Google is telling me can be related?

OP posts:
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