After a sleepless night, Penelope and I both went to the dentist this morning. I expected it to be a challenging visit. Sure enough, after playing by herself for a while by emptying the contents of my purse on the dentist’s office floor, there was a spontaneous outburst of discontent. Apparently she was not impressed with the fact that someone was poking and scraping inside her mama’s mouth. Well, she wasn’t impressed that she didn’t get to watch.
For the rest of my visit in the chair she sat on my stomach and watched in awe as the hygienist attempted to scrape off the build up of plaque that comes with neglecting your teeth due to baby brain. Note to new parents: floss your damn teeth, no matter how bloody tired you are! Remind each other to brush your teeth more that once a day... or for those first couple months, more than once every other day if you’re anything like I was in mombie state. Shiver with disgust, it’s okay. Sometimes, between all the boobing, diapers, trying to simply sleep or keep up with a newly mobile baby, you just forget.
The screams didn’t come until later, when P got strange fingers probing around inside her own mouth. Turns out the last few nights have been sleepless for a reason. She’s about to cut 3 or 4 teeth. Probably all at once. Joy. We received even better news about her orthodontic future. The two teeth she has tell the dentist that she has inherited my teeth. They are really close together. Adult teeth are bigger than baby teeth, so if baby teeth are tight, without spaces between them, there is a good chance there will be a lot of crowding with the second set of teeth.
Son of a whore! Could we not catch a break with this? I don’t know if you’ve seen past photos of my beautiful baby daddy, but he’s got a KILLER smile. All natural. Mine? Picture 4 years of headgear and braces. Yes, actually I WAS an adorable kid.
Told you. J saw this and commented, "you look like you're getting ready to eat the bunnies". I told him that first of all, they were puppies (one of which gave me my first hickey but that's a story for another time) and secondly, that I was cute as hell with my crooked teeth and broken nose. And I may have called him a jerk. But I do look a little hungry eh?
I actually tried to find a photo of the mouth gear, but surprisingly there are none of me in my stylin’ ortho wear. I can only assume that I destroyed all the evidence during that low self esteem period every teenager inevitably goes through. This means I have work to do. I so do not want my daughter to be self conscious. I want her to smile as brightly as she does now, crowded teeth and all. I want her to show the rows of metal and I don’t want her to hold her laughter back so photos only have her smiling with her mouth closed.
So how do you do that? Pretend my experience with braces was better than it was? Simply teach her as she grows that she’s amazing! All I can do is continue to focus on how clever, funny, smart and lovely she is and hope it sinks in before those horrible preteen years hit.
We tried to get a “baby’s first trip to the dentist” shot but she was freeeeeaking out, so blurry shots of the back of her head and me laughing is all we got. Yes, I laugh at her while she cries. It’s what keeps me sane.
