Brennan's 1st Trip to the Dentist!

Today Brennan had his first visit to the dentist office.  He is awfully young for it, so I was worried about how it would go.  We noticed that Brennan was getting these weird stains on his teeth so we figured a trip to the dentist was in order.

When we first got to the office, Brennan didn't want to go in.  This didn't have even one thing to do with the dentist, though.  The office is near the train tracks, so Brennan REALLY didn't want to part with the passing choo-choo train.  Soon enough I had him talked into coming in to look at the cool toys in the waiting room.  They called us back really quickly and I set Brennan into the big chair.

He isn't typically a shy kid, so I wasn't worried about that part of the experience.  He sure looks tiny in that big chair!

The hygienist was really nice to Brennan and showed him how she puts on her pink gloves.  She even let him touch her gloves before she touched them on his mouth.  She told him to open his mouth up wide like an alligator and show her his teeth.  He would open, but not really wide.  He just kept saying, "ahh" and them smiling at her...  He's such a tease.

Pretty soon, it was time to see the dentist.  She wore pink gloves, too!  First, she just looked in Brennan's mouth and talked to him a bit.  Then she told him that she wanted to count his teeth with her tooth counter.  She showed him how she would count his teeth by first counting his fingers with her tooth counter, then she 'counted' his teeth.  In other words, "I'd like to put this in your mouth to get you used to it without you freaking out and biting me!  Can we do that?"

After she saw that he was fine with a dental instrument in his mouth, she showed him his reflection in her little mirror.  He immediately put that into his mouth, too.  Yeah... my boy is a quick learner! :)  After she let him hold it, he had it in his head that it was HIS mirror.  She thought it would just be easiest to let him hold one and she would hold another.  He let her take a good look around.

At first, she gave me a big scare!  She thought that the discoloration on the back of his teeth looked like cavities!  I about fell over!  We've done everything right!  We brush his teeth everyday, we don't let him drink almost any juice since he doesn't care for it much, anyway, and we never let him bring a bottle or sippy cup to bed with him.  Cavities!?!?  After a second, she realized that it really was just staining, which is much better than cavities.  

She tried to use their spinny toothbrush and some pumice toothpaste to get the staining off, but it wasn't improving it too much.  Brennan was being pretty cooperative still, and I was so proud of him!  She scraped a little of it off with one of their tools, but didn't want to be too aggressive and scare him or hurt him, which was fine by me.

We don't know how or why he is getting this staining, and it hasn't been brushing off with regular brushing, but it did flake off pretty easily when she scraped on it.  She showed me a way that we can hold Brennan to encourage cooperation and really get at the staining.  Hopefully it starts to slowly breakdown.  Either way, she says it is only cosmetic and it generally resolves itself by the time they get to be 4 or 5.

Brennan did such a great job at the dentist and I was extremely proud of him!  He was a charmer with the ladies, as always, and he left the office with his hands full...  He was given a toy truck, another rubber duck, which brings his rubber duck collection up to four members, and a cool new toothbrush.  You'll never guess which of these things was his favorite.  That's right... my mini-dentist LOVES his new toothbrush.  Brushing his teeth has become a favorite pastime of his lately, so he was quite thrilled to have a new brush.  

I sure am glad this 'first' went so well.  I had some doubts, but he proved me wrong!

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