does an apple a day count for dentists too?

Over the last few years with Blake's job we have had some good insurance. OK let me restate that to us it is great, since there was a long stint we had no insurance. And we even have dental. Thank goodness too. I know i had a lot of cavities in my younger years and I'm pretty sure i passed that fabulous gene onto my kids. In the last month and a half we have been to the dentist 6 times. I asked them if i needed to start paying rent or if that's just part of my bill.

It all started with Ryan's pulpotomy (baby root canal) that i posted on a short time ago. I figured i needed to have the boys get their teeth cleaned so that we didn't have that happen again and they were due to be cleaned (since we have had insurance we have done it semi-annually like they suggest). So off we went to have Ethan and Sam have their teeth cleaned (Ryan's appointment was for later). Ethan didn't have any cavities. HOORAY!!! Sam on the other hand.....well he and the dentist/hygienist have a history. Sam does NOT like doing the x-rays. And generally after a few tries and me working up a sweat trying to get him to do it and sit still and all that we have given up a few times. BUT, not this time. We had talked to Sam before we even got to the dentist about Ryan's root canal and told him the best way to avoid that was to let them get a good x-ray so they knew if he had a cavity. So for this visit, i think it was the first of 6 maybe 7 visits, that he let the x-rays go smoothly. Ahhhhh. Relief. But much to our dismay Sam had a pulpotomy to be done 2 cavities AND had to have his front tooth extracted (pulled). Poor kid.

When the day came for the pulpotomy and extraction for sam, Blake took him to the office. I am secretly really, really, really glad it was blake cause it's a work out to take sam to the dentist. But also after hearing how it went down i think i might have cried for my baby. he did pretty good, all things considered, but the shots they gave him in the front were a bit more painful. And after pulling the tooth we are all really glad that's what they did. The reason they decided to pull the tooth was the adult tooth was coming in behind it. And as you can see by the looks of that root Sam was not going to be able to get that out on his own. The root wasn't "re-absorbing" like they should so that a little kid can get it loose and pull it out.

I'll spare you the really close up picture of sam's mouth--seriously kinda gross (looked like gray matter in there). But you can see the swelling in his cheeks and lips and the glazed look in his eyes. Fast forward to last week when he needed to go in for his other two cavities. (well actually because of the move we almost forgot and almost missed the appointment time, but they called to reschedule because of a time thing for them, whew!) I got to take sam this time since blake had to work, but after things going well last time i thought we'd be home free. Plus this isn't the first time sam has had a cavity so no big, right!? NO WAY! After fighting with Sam in the dentist chair for 45 minutes about the shot that he was SO not going to have anything to do with, we decided to change the appointment. Poor Dr. Taylor, he was trying so hard to help sam and sam was just freaked out by the shot. Before we left Dr. Taylor wanted to be sure sam knew he was his friend and that he really didn't want to hurt him at all, and that he wanted to be sure he was OK. Sam left liking Dr. Taylor. As i was re-scheduling his appointment sam said to me "next week works better for me anyway." For the next few days we talked over with sam the point of the dentist is to help keep our teeth healthy. Yes, shots sometimes hurt but they are over fast. Small cavities are better than big ones. etc. But we also told him he couldn't have any treats since we wanted to be sure his teeth were good and healthy since he didn't want the dentist to fix them. He went into the dentist today, flinched once over the shot, but then was good to go. The gas was high the movie was good, just had a hard time getting him to keep his mouth open wide enough all through the visit but after last weeks attempt i think it was a very very good visit.

(Disclaimer: i know sam was probably stressed out because of the major work he had had done the visit before, and i do not want to make it seem like we didn't acknowledge that.)