Poor Boogie's teeth are a mess. Today we've taken him In for his third filling. As horrific as that sounds, he's due a fourth next week. He gets them done one at a time due to the horrific nature of making a three and a half year old sit still for the half hour each one takes, so it's spreading out over time.
He got his first two a few months ago, convincing me that I was the worst mother ever and that he was doomed from early childhood, so since then he's been brutalised into brushing his teeth twice a day, and the odd flossing (a real skill when you're doing it to another person). It didn't help.
Today's tooth went black over Christmas. BLACK. The dentist office didn't open till Monday, so I'm down to facebooking the receptionist and getting her to sneak into the office and make us an appointment that day (that actually happened).
Turns out in about 2 months the entire thing has rotted out. An X-ray of the tooth next door at the last appointment shows it was absolutely fine then. An expected filling turned into a root canal, a quick snooze and blood all over the place.
To destroy the dentists nerve before he'd even begun, Boogs felt the tickle of the anaesthetic needle in his gum, and tried to slap away the dentist like a fly, smacking the hand and needle across his face, tearing through his gum, a chunk of top lip and scratching across his nose. The dentist did a tremendous job of not letting Boogie know he was bleeding all over the place, and calmly convincing him to a) stop poking all his fingers into the bloody mess and b) don't slap the dentist while he's got a frikkin needle in your face!
The nurse and dentist finally manage to clean up all the blood, thankfully without him ever noticing it was there, an move on to the next stage of getting all the gunk out of the poor sore tooth. Further and further in they go, until they realise it's going to be more than an easy filling. I swear his tiny baby teeth are like a half centimetre square, and the dentist said they went 14mm into it. Gag. Although while I'm getting more and more grossed out, Boogie is getting more and more relaxed... And keeps turning his head to the side... And his blinks get longer... And longer... Wait a minute.
Who falls asleep during a root canal?!?! What is going on? The frantic parent within starts to wonder if he's bleeding out somewhere, but it's soon apparent that he's just a bit bored of all this sitting still, so he's going to have a bit of a kip. I had to carefully position myself under the nurses left elbow in order to point his face in the right direction while he snored right through it.
I don't understand how he manages to relax so much, at the same time as utterly shattering my nerve for the rest of the day. I've needed a drink ever since. Ive freaked out and made him brush all the non sore bits of mouth three times and when asked about his day, the most interesting thing that comes to his mind is that we saw an ambulance on the way home.
He just blows my mind.
