Today was Isabel's first visit to the dentist and she did SO GREAT!
Yesterday, she accompanied me to my dentist appointment, and everyone in the office was completely enamored with her. She was on her very best behavior and I was so proud of her (actually wished I could take that behavior, clone it, and apply it to all our time at home together!) Yesterday, on our way to the dentist;s office, I gave her a choice if she wanted to go first, or if she wanted me to. She she was still a little apprehensive about the dentist at that point, so she was very adamant that she wanted me to go first. "I am just going to watch you, Mommy. Then it will be my turn." So that is what we did.
When I was the one in the big chair, my hygienist was so helpful and interacted with Isabel the whole time, explaining what she was doing all along the way with Mommy's teeth. Isabel was very talkative with her as well, and just sat on the floor in the corner, talking to us, and playing with her bracelet and bouncy ball they had let her pick out from the prize box. When the hygienist told Isabel she was going to floss Mommy's teeth, Isabel got very excited and said "Do you want to see the dental floss in my Dora book?" She proceeded to get out her "Dora goes to the dentist" book, and flipped through each page one by one, mumbling, "It's not on here" as she turned to each new page, until she got to the right page, and said "There it is! See! She has floss just like yours!" and came over to excitedly show the hygienist (SO cute!)
So today, I picked her up from school early, and she had no hesitation or apprehension as she announced to the class "I am going to the dentist!" Then she turns to me and says "Mommy, will you hold my hand at the dentist?" I told her that of course I would. When we got there, I grabbed lovey just in case she needed it, but she never asked for it the entire time we were there. She waltzed right in like she owned the place, climbed herself up in the chair when they asked her to, put on the sunglasses (see below) to shield her eyes from their "special light", and was very brave when they reclined the chair all the way back and scooted her tiny little body all the way up so her head could rest on the pillow. She had just a couple of minutes when the hygienist tried to start looking at her teeth, where a look of sheer panic came over her face and she shook her head and would not open her mouth. But she was not doing this in a defiant way, and neither a tear was shed nor a tantrum thrown.
With just some minor coaxing by the hygienist ("Are you sure you don't have any teeth in there? Oh! I see two of them peeking out! Are there more in there?" etc), Isabel gradually got comfortable enough to not only let them count her teeth (which was their ultimate goal for her first visit), but also to let them do a full polish with bubble-gum flavored toothpaste, and even to floss all her teeth! Needless to say, I was very impressed. As were both the hygienist and the dentist. Both of them said that she is the youngest child to have ever let them do a full cleaning and exam on her first visit. Way to go, my growing-up-way-too-fast baby girl!
And the moral of the story is that she has NO cavities! They are very happy with our tooth care routine for her at home and said to keep it up. They are also not concerned at all about the alignment of her upper and lower teeth being negatively affected by the fact that she still sucks on her middle two fingers on her left hand. They said we don't need to worry about trying to get her to stop doing that anytime soon. I was certainly relieved by that and feel she will eventually and gradually wean herself from that.
