To begin with, his adventures have nothing to do with the photo to the right. That's just cute and I wanted to share. There are a couple more if you click on the picture and follow the link to Flickr.
Now, the adventure. A couple of weeks ago I was standing in line at Burger King, holding Gavin. On a whim, completely out of the blue, I asked him to open his mouth wide and look at the ceiling. I checked out his teeth, hunting for spots that might be cavities. This is something I've never done before. And yet, there before my eyes, and much to my horror, was an enormous brown spot covering the entire back of one of his upper molars. Just to be sure I stuck my finger in his mouth an scraped with a nail. The nail sunk in a bit and the texture was rough, and Gavin pulled back and exclaimed in pain.
I was horrified. I repeat, horrified. Even though I know it happens, I just never thought he'd have cavities this young. Kids his age aren't supposed to have cavities! Did I mentioned how horrified I was?
So I went home and called out dentist. The receptionist told me the dentist would look at him, but would likely refuse to treat him because of his age. They referred me to a pediatric dentist, the same one several friends I consulted recommended. It took me a few days but I finally got around to calling and making an appointment.
The pediatric dentist was fantastic. She was everything you'd expect a ped doc to be - friendly outgoing patient and engaging, not to mention able to work around the wiggles of a two and a half year old.
She confirmed what I already knew, that it was a cavity. She also said that his molars are hypoplastic, something I haven't managed to find a whole lot of good information on, but essentially means that he didn't get enough of some essential nutrient (calcium, most likely) when the tooth buds were forming, and now they are more susceptible to decay. Additionally, she found another spot on the same molar on the other side of his mouth that had a spot of decay in a much earlier stage, and a spot between his two front teeth. She said the only one that needed filled right now was the orginal one I'd found.
Yesterday we went in for the filling. Jason came along to be the muscle, as I didn't want Gavin to be tied down in the papoose blanket, and I knew there was now way I could hold him with my enormous belly in the way. And thank goodness he was there, as Gavin's struggles were a challenge even to Jason -- he is a strong kiddo, particularly when pumped up with adrenaline.
First Dr J did a cleaning, which freaked Gavin out, but it seems to have taken care of the spot between his front teeth. Then the drilling and filling of the cavity.
It was not pretty. Or fun. Or easy on the ears. Or the heart. But we survived. Gavin is none the worse for the wear, and now when he talks about Dr J and his adventure, it seems that he is processing the experience well. He has a checkup scheduled in 6 months for a regular cleaning and so on, so we shall see. Dr J assured me ethat the vast majority of kids are fine and have no lasting damage or great fear of the dentist. I hope not, as I had terrible fear of the dentist for years and years. I don't want him to have the same fear.
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His next adventure will take place tomorrow night at Grandma's house. He'll be having his first (attempted) sleepover away from mom and dad and our home. This is in preparation for when I'm in labor, just in case he needs to be away from us overnight.
My mom was here this evening and she asked Gavin if he wanted to have a pajama party at her house tomorrow night. Wow, you should have seen how excited he got. He was so thrilled at the thought! He wanted to go sleep there NOW, TONIGHT! Was so sad when he couldn't.
We shall see how it goes tomorrow. Hopefully we'll all sleep through the night!
Posted by allison at December 14, 2006 08:54 PM