A visit to the dentist

On Friday Bennett had his first trip to the dentist, and he did awesome!  He probably should have had his first visit a while ago, but I put it off because we weren't sure if we wanted him to go to a pediatric dentist or to the dentist we see.  I often say that I've been to my dentist since I had teeth (not entirely correct since my dentist passed away and someone else took over the practice, but it's the same building and some of the same people) so I felt a bit guilty for wanting to take him elsewhere.  But Chris and I thought a pediatric dentist might work better for him since they have more experience with kids.

We started to prep him for his visit a week or two in advance.  Nothing major, just reading a couple of books we have about teeth/ the dentist and letting him know he was going to go and that he'd have to hold his mouth open for them, etc.  And I guess it worked, because he was fabulous.

Here the hygienist is showing Bennett her special "tickle brush".  She showed it to him first on his finger so that he could get used to how it felt.

Then she showed him her mirror and let him look at himself in it.

 

Then it was time for the cleaning.  He did well with the brushing and polishing, but when she started to scrape the tartar, that's when he got a little fidgety and wanted to hold on to me.  About a week ago we noticed some discoloration behind his bottom front teeth, so she worked on that to scrape it off.

While we waited for the dentist, Bennett got to pick out a couple of stickers, and they brought over some crayons and a coloring page to keep Bennett entertained.  Then the dentist came in.  You can tell how at ease Bennett was during the whole thing by how he's sitting here!  When she started doing more scraping he did need to hold my hand again, but that didn't surprise me.  

The dentist mentioned that the discoloration looked like iron stains to her.  Not sure where that would have come from.  But it's just on the tartar/plaque, so not anything to be too concerned about.  They got most of it off.  They probably could have gotten more, but since Bennett was squirming they didn't want to push him too much.  If in 3-4 months we notice it's getting really bad she suggested we come back in, but otherwise there's not harm in waiting 6 months until his next appointment.  And coming in earlier would just be to make it a little easier to remove it.

And when he was all done he got to pick out a prize.  He loved looking at all of the choices.  Pencils, erasers, poppers, bracelets, animals, etc.  In the end he chose a red plastic platypus.