Notes from the crib

George had his first trip to the dentist today. Unfortunately, it was an unscheduled visit.

This morning I was going over my annual enrollment documents at work and selecting which dental plan to choose. I was also making sure that George was added to our plan so that he'd be able to go to the dentist once the new year starts in September. For some reason (probably that he was toothless) we forgot to add him to the dental plan this past year. This morning as I was selecting the dental plan I thought to myself, "Please don't let anything happen to his teeth between now and September 1st".

So after work, George and I came home and went to the pool. I was hoping to wear him out so he'd nap - he's only had one nap this week which has made for a long and stressful week. There are two pools that we frequent and the one that we usually hang out in was having tile work done today, so we went over to the other one. George was playing on the steps, but they were much more narrow than the ones in the other pool. He tripped and hit his mouth on the edge of the pool and I heard a horrible "clink" sound. George started screaming and I picked him up and walked with him until I could get him calmed down. There was no blood and he wouldn't let me look at his mouth. He wanted down and ran back into the pool to play. A few minutes later I noticed he kept sucking his lips around his teeth in an odd manner and making a face. I finally managed to get him to open his mouth and I saw that one of his front teeth was all ragged. In a panicked mommy moment, I scooped him up, gathered his toys, and we got in his car to come back to the house. I asked one of the friendly lifeguards to help me look in his mouth to be sure of what I was seeing, and sure enough, it looked like George had chipped his front tooth.

We rushed home and I called the pediatrician to figure out what to do and get some recommendations for dentists. This was lunchtime, and we ended up having to have the pediatrician paged. Luckily he called us right back. I described the problem and he thought that it probably wasn't urgent that George be seen, but to try to get him in to a dentist sooner rather than later. He suggested we call our family dentist, but DH and I are both in between dentists right now and don't have anyone to call.

Luckily, I remembered that I'd seen a sign for a new dentist in town on my way in to work this morning. I called and they said to bring George right over. I got us changed out of our wet swimsuits and away we went. We were whisked into a room right away and the dentist checked George out. I had taken one of George's stuffed animals and they had a dental themed talking stuffed toy at the office. Between the two of those, we were able to have me hold George in my lap while sitting in the chair and distract him enough to get the tooth checked out. George really didn't want to open his mouth but other than just pursing his lips shut he didn't do much protesting. He was pretty shy at the dental office and, really, on pretty good behavior. The dentist said that it was just a 1st degree enamel chip, that it didn't affect the bone and the best course of action was to do nothing at all. He thought the ragged edge would wear itself down, but it if started to cause problems we could come back and have the tooth built up.

I asked whether George could have a binkie and he said yes (I was concerned about the binkie causing problems with his poor little tooth), but then I got the "take the pacifiers away" lecture. I also received the standard dentist to parent lecture on brushing his teeth, not giving him beverages in bed, not giving him juice, brushing after milk, yada yada yada. With all my teeth history, I am pretty good about making sure George's are taken care of - we do allow the binkie but that will be phased out after his birthday. For now he just gets it in bed or in the car (or in public if he needs to be "plugged"). Other than that, we weren't doing anything on the "do not do" dental list.

I didn't get any pictures of George's first dentist visit. I was much too panicked and upset about my baby being hurt to remember to take the camera. See, another reason to get that iPhone I've been wanting.