Out with the Old

It's that magical time of Shnookie 2's life when she's preparing for braces. Unfortunately, she inherits my "gotta hold onto these teeth" DNA and has lost only 5 baby teeth on her own. She'd already had a bunch pulled over the years as it became necessary. I think the dentist was trying to show her uptight mouth that 'see, it's not the end of the world to give up a few.' But, alas, message not received, because we had to make another trip to chair this week.

The orthodontist had sent instructions to our dentist to pull 4 teeth. The dentist took one look in her mouth and said "Oh, no, it's gonna be way more than 4, I'll tell you that right now." Shnookie 2's eyes pop out of her head. Then he starts counting "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...." I have to admit, the mother bear in me was shocked, and I had to question the dentist on this matter. I mean, really--can you just DO that? Start yanking out unauthorized teeth? Is this the wild west? I felt a little panicked, like I should call the orthodontist or my congressman, or SOMEOME. What kept me in my seat was the fact that I trust this man, he's actually a friend of ours, and he's done excellent work on us in the past. He assured me that most of them were just hanging by a thread anyway.

It only took 20 minutes--a messy, unnervingly noisy 20 minutes--and they were all out. They gave her laughing gas (have to admit, I was little jealous of that point), but she was still quite tense, so I stayed with her. Rubbed her feet mostly, which was probably only annoying, but all the rest of her was rather unaccessible. A mom's gotta do something. It's hard to just sit there and see the water streaming silently out of the outer edges of her eyes.

It reminds me of the time when she was only 5 months old, and they had to stick a thingy down through her tear duct to puncture a hole into her nose. (It was clogged and she was getting eye infections) About killed me. At least this time they didn't make me hold her down. ~cringe~

One of the incredible things about Shnookie2 is that she's such a trooper and doesn't complain EVER. So when stuff like this happens, I have to remind myself that things are probably at least twice as bad as what she's saying. It's been a week, and she's still in constant search of soft foods that sustain life.

Before I got braces, I had to have 10 teeth pulled, although they did it in 2 visits. But the time I had the 6 pulled at once, I was pretty miserable. I probably remember it more than is natural, but that's me. And I REALLY remember how on the way home from getting all those teeth yanked, my mom just had to stop by the library to get something, and I had to go in with her. Truly awful. I was so numb that I couldn't tell I was drooling. Not my proudest teen moment. So all the way home with Shnookie 2, I'm telling her "I will NOT take you to the library now." I'm not sure how that translated through her drug-induced haze, but it made me feel like mother of the year.