I know you are supposed to take your kids to the dentist when they are young, but we hadn’t done that yet. We just took the kids to the dentist for the first time and it went ok. Ryan and Lillian both did great. The dentist was great and over all it was a great experience. We did get bad news about Ryan’s teeth. He had several cavities and some were pretty bad. He had cavities in every quadrant in his mouth and since they were pretty bad the dentist gave us several options of how to fix his teeth. First option was to make four different appointments. Give him laughing gas four different times while the dentist worked on his teeth four different times. This seemed like a huge hassle. We thought this might be a negative experience for Ryan and we weren’t thrilled about that. We didn’t want him to have negative experience with the dentist or be afraid to go in the future. Our other option was to have Ryan go under general anesthetics and get all the work done in one day. Our dentist office has a pediatric dental anesthesiologist come in once a month to do work on kids and he would be in the office in 4 days. It didn’t give us much time to talk about what option we would do, but we were pretty certain we would have Ryan go under General Anesthesia (GA).
The dentist gave us the weekend to talk it over, but Monday they would need to set something set up. The dental office was great and talked us through both options. They were there to talk us through every scenario. They gave us their email address so we could email them with questions over the weekend. The Anesthesiologist’s office called us and went over everything with us as well and answered any questions we had. We finally decided that we would have Ryan go under GA.
I’m a worrier by nature and I was super stressed about this. I also had massive mom guilt over his teeth. We are super good at brushing teeth. We set timers and we rarely miss brushing. Ryan doesn’t even munch like Lillian likes to, but he still had cavities. Our dentist basically just told us we should floss…which I haven’t done. I also felt like if I took him in sooner then we wouldn’t need to do all this massive work. (Which is true.) I just felt so guilty and stressed that my poor boy was going under GA.
Chris took half day off work (it was even a super busy day, with several meetings that he barely made it in time to) and I was so happy to have him with me. Lillian also came with us and she played in the dental office and watched movies while we waited. She kept telling me she was lonely. She’s not used to being without her bub. (Side note, the other night Ryan and Chris went rock climbing. On those nights its just me and Lil. We were cooking in the kitchen and Lillian ran in the other room and was like “Bub, come see this!” she came back in the kitchen sad because she realized Ryan wasn’t there. She did this several times….Lillian is going to have a hard time when Ryan is in kindergarten.) She even asked if she could go back and go to sleep with Ryan…
Anyway the procedure went as expected. They didn’t have to pull any teeth like they thought they might. He got fewer crowns than worse case scenario. The procedure took about 2-2 1/2 hours. They let me go back with him until he was out and I was able to hold his hound while he fell asleep. He was watching Big Hero 6 and the anesthesiologist would talk to him about it while Ryan had a breathing mask on. (That is how they gave him the sleepy medicine.) When he was asleep I went back to the waiting room. They told me they put a breathing tube through his nose and an IV in his ankle (all procedure). They did this while he was already asleep so there was nothing stressful for him. When the procedure was done they had an air mattress set up in another room that we were able to go in and wait for him to wake up. The anesthesiologist carried Ryan out and talked to us. He gave us a heads up of what to expect when Ryan woke up. (Breathing was loud and raspy, he got the shakes pretty badly, but the anesthesiologist let us know that all that was normal.) The anesthesiologist left us a lone to be with Ryan as Ryan was waking up. We got a few videos of Ryan waking up and some pictures because we told Ryan that he might feel funny afterwards, he might cry, he might be grouchy, and he might be goofy and he wanted to see how he was. (He ended up being sad/grouchy.) When he woke up the dentist brought him (and Lillian) a Popsicle. He felt weird for awhile. It ended up being a really good experience. The anesthesiologist was awesome. He was great at talking to us and he was great with Ryan. I’m a huge fan of his and would recommend him to anyone! Our dentist was also awesome and I am so glad that we found them!
When we got home Ryan was allowed to play on his tablet all day and relax and eat pudding and he thought it was awesome! We were told that he may have nausea afterwards, but he was great! He was even a bit rowdier sooner than I thought. But I was glad he was feeling good. The dentist and the anesthesiologist both called to check on him which was great! He was able to go on as normal basically the next day. Ryan still had a few lows and I still encouraged him to take it easy the next few days. The only negative he felt was a sore throat from the breathing tube, but that resolved itself quickly. He was so brave and did great. We definitely made the right choice for us and I’m very happy with how everything turned out!
His mouth is full of silver!
