As a mom, I get to do lots of super-fun things, such as take my 4 year old to the dentist:
Um, smile...?
Oh, don’t be so quick to congratulate me on my diligence and zeal for my child’s oral hygiene. The checkup visit was last week. This visit was to fill the cavity they discovered in his tiny little 4-year-old tooth:
Only a blogger would take this photo
Um, yeah, talk about a proud parenting moment. Try preparing your preschooler to sit still while two adults, virtual strangers, are going to root around in his little mouth. Try to swallow your guilt for all the apple juice (but it was calcium-fortified!) and gummy fruit snacks you let him have because it made him happy. Try not to remember when his first pediatric dentist showed you a plastic container filled with the frillion grams of pure cane sugar, the amount contained in one small cup of juice, and gave you dire warnings of this very possibility.
That’s right; we’d been warned, and graphically so. When we lived in PA, he fell ass over teakettle down half a flight of wooden stairs in our house, losing three of his bottom teeth as a result. We connected with a fantastic pediatric dentist, even though there were only 17 remaining teeth to care for. I guess now there are 16.5.
I often wish I could wrap my kids in bubble wrap until they’re, like, 25. OK, maybe only 23, but you know what I mean. The worst thing as a parent is not being able to keep your kids from harm. Bubta had his stroke; The Boss takes daily asthma medication and has a permanent scar on the very top of his head where the vacuum thingy attached to help him exit the birth canal. Nothing I could do to stop any of it.
Peezer was a superlative dental patient. He laid very still and didn’t appear the least bit tense, as opposed to his mother, whose shoulders touch her ears whenever she’s asked to open wide so they can get into her mouth to fix stuff. Peezer fixated on the TV – mind-numbing Cartoon Network schlock – the one time in recent memory where I was like, hey, watch the terrible commercials and everything! Enjoy the characters’ sass and sarcasm! Anything you want, baby!
Of course they cautioned us, don’t let him bite his lip while it’s numb. But of course, he did. Now his lip is all puffy. Hopefully it will go down tonight while he sleeps.
The good news, if there is any, is that he appears to be unaffected by the experience. Untraumatized. Still loves the dentist. If any kid should hate the dentist, it’s the Peezer. But he surprised me again. Made me very proud, even as I hung my head for having conributed to his having to have a tooth filled in the first place.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to brush, floss, rinse and spit, and wrap my babies in bubble wrap.
Filed under: kids, Old enough to know better, overextended family, parenthood, parenting, Why I'm The Way I Am Tagged: | cavity, dentist, parenting
Dear Lord, I had that vacuum thingy too with first child, what a nightmare from hell.
You are a better mother than I, because I could NOT be within a 2-mile radius of a dentist’s drill, in fact I “have” (oh, the drudgery) to take valium starting Thursday night and into Friday to do a very minor–and I do mean VERY minor–dental procedure on Friday (for me, although I’d gladly take it for a procedure to be done on my children too, mind you, but only if prescribed).
Hats off to your wonderful little guy. He’s as cute as a bug’s ear.
(Or is that bog’s ear?)
CBW, for a person who claims a near phobia of dentists, you sure seem to be going there a lot! Hope it’s nothing too serious. Take two pills – they’re small.
Nice take on this Soup. The one good thing is, now Peez willingly brushes, “…so I don’t get a nother hole in my teeth.”
Lemonade out of lemons, dear.
i’m now off to brush julia’s teeth after her daily pancake breakfast!!
she was vacuumed out at birth too, not fun.
We’re switching to flavored water (like Propel) instead of juice. Still having a hard time finding an alternative to fruit snacks though…
I did not need to read this. Jae brushes his teeth once a day, drinks plenty of juice, and has never been to the dentist. His first appointment is next week. Cross your fingers.
Eli has never been a fan of plain water and doesn’t dig milk, hence the calcium-fortified juice. I’m OK with the flavor if it keeps him away from juice.
Brush those pearly whites twice a day if you can and good for you for getting him to the dentist! I wouldn’t say the boys love the dentist, but they don’t mind it in the least – they are very compliant. Even Bubta.
Also, flavored water has been a BIG HIT at our house, but he now refuses to drink “plain water.”
Why bother with the visit? He’s got a backup set. Heck if I knew I had backup arteries ready to pop in place I’d run, not walk, to the freezer to polish off that last bit of ice cream.
This particular tooth has to last him till he’s like 9 or 10, so another 4 or 5 years. Meanwhile, he has a big gaping hole in the bottom of his mouth where three front teeth were lost and we’re hoping those perm teeth come in earlier rather than later. One of these years…
Careful of the yummy waters, some of them have a lot of sugar. I’m not sure about Propel per se, but read the labels. Milk has a lot of sugar as well.
Just an FYI from the guy that needs to read labels
Yep, I’m with ya, been reading ‘em like a freak. No worries about the sugar in milk, we can’t get the child to drink it except on the rare occasion he requests “vanilla milk” which usually involves vanilla creamer (I know) and frothed skim milk. Because that’s how we roll, yo.
On labels? Who’da thought! Plain old corn flakes have more sodium than potato chips. Yes way. And cottage cheese is LOADED,LOADED with sodium. Even milk has sodium. And “organic ” does NOT mean sodium free nor fat free. And the no trans fat thing? The law says that if a serving has less than 0.5 mg trans fats, it may be rated as zero. Well, trans-fat-free cooking spray is rated as zero, BUT BUT a serving size is a spray lasting (are you ready for this?) 0.24 seconds !!!!! Can you spray 0.24 seconds? Hungry for a salty snack? Go grab a cup of corn flakes, with or without milk.
It’s hard to be an educated consumer. They make it hard for a mom to understand it all, even a mom with a college degree.
Mmmm, corn flakes.
Was just looking again at the photos of Peezer. Your Uncle Roy (for the benefit of both non-family readers, Uncle Roy was Grandma Sara’s dentist-brother) used to luv to check out Soup’s and Bets’ teeth, called them your pearly whites. He got such a kick out of having you climb up on the chair. What a dear man he was.
I loved having Uncle Roy as my dentist! He was a cool dude. It’s really cute watching Peez climb up on the big chair.