First Dentist Appointment!

First off, I will have to kick myself for forgetting my camera. For goodness sake I even had a camera phone and still managed to forget to take photos.

So, today was Tyler's much anticipated first dentist appointment. Now Tyler has been VERY nervous about this appointment, and I was anxious due to the circumstances and his lack of sleep, but he handled it MUCH better than I expected. The staff was really good with him, letting him sit on my lap and demonstrating the stuff on me, etc. He did shed a few tears part-way through his cleaning, but he held in there. More tears flowed when the dentist came in, but really, he didn't throw a total fit, so I guess I'm pretty happy about that.

The dentist said he doesn't think the binki caused any damage at all. In fact he said he would have been fine with him keeping it (as long as it was just for nighttime use) until he got permanent teeth (that shocked me) so I hope I made the right decision to take it. He said that the force the pacifier puts on the mouth is much different than that caused from thumb-sucking, so the pacifier is definitely the lesser of two evils. He said hopefully Tyler won't revert to sucking his thumb, but IF he does, he gave me some recommendations to try to keep him from developing that habit.

Unfortunately he said he had a couple of "suspicious spots" on some of his teeth. He said he thought it was unrelated to the pacifier. It was more likely due to the lack of flouride since I had still been using toddler toothpaste, but it's also possible he just has soft teeth. They said they'll just wait until his next appointment unless the teeth start to cause him pain. They said they try to keep the appointments fun and positive for as long as possible and, considering he is still very
anxious about the dentist, they didn't want to push it.

Tyler picked out a lovely little yo-yo from the "treasure chest" when he was all done, and is thrilled with his new SpongeBob toothpaste and Dora toothbrush. Life is good.