A little bit of background...
My 4.5 yr old DD just finished with extensive dental work on 11 teeth (including the drilling away of half of both front teeth)...due to "rampant" decay. Things are going much better for her now thank goodness and her follow up appointment was great.
The bad news was that I took my then 17mo old along to the follow-up appointment as I had noticed yellowing across her front 4 teeth and what looked to me like caries between two of her teeth. A week later my 17mo was getting sealants on the existing morlars as well has sanding, etc on her front teeth. This all happened very fast...and I was not expecting them not to give her any freezing. Needless to say she did experience pain during the treatment and it was quite traumatic for her at the time.
The resultant effect is that my now 19mos old who once LOVED to have her teeth brushed now clamps her mouth tight at the sight of the toothbrush. I feel like we are doing more damage than good in trying brush her teeth as it has literally become a battle of wills. I don't want to "force" her, but I know if we don't remedy this soon, we are going to be back in the same position we were a few months ago. I do not want to repeat what I had to go through with my 4yr old.
I am already starting the search for a new dentist with a gentler approach. I would have even considered general anaestetic if I had known that she was going to treat the front teeth in that manner (there was blood so I KNOW it hurt)...we were only supposed to be sealing the back teeth and seeing how much we could do with the front - which I assume was just testing the water in terms of how she would react -- not sanding away on the surface and opening spaces between the teeth with no pain relief at all whatsoever.
Anyway, any ideas on how I can gently encourage my baby to allow us to brush her teeth? She is still night nursing and I need to be able to clean her teeth before the decay sets in again.
My 4.5 yr old DD just finished with extensive dental work on 11 teeth (including the drilling away of half of both front teeth)...due to "rampant" decay. Things are going much better for her now thank goodness and her follow up appointment was great.
The bad news was that I took my then 17mo old along to the follow-up appointment as I had noticed yellowing across her front 4 teeth and what looked to me like caries between two of her teeth. A week later my 17mo was getting sealants on the existing morlars as well has sanding, etc on her front teeth. This all happened very fast...and I was not expecting them not to give her any freezing. Needless to say she did experience pain during the treatment and it was quite traumatic for her at the time.
The resultant effect is that my now 19mos old who once LOVED to have her teeth brushed now clamps her mouth tight at the sight of the toothbrush. I feel like we are doing more damage than good in trying brush her teeth as it has literally become a battle of wills. I don't want to "force" her, but I know if we don't remedy this soon, we are going to be back in the same position we were a few months ago. I do not want to repeat what I had to go through with my 4yr old.
I am already starting the search for a new dentist with a gentler approach. I would have even considered general anaestetic if I had known that she was going to treat the front teeth in that manner (there was blood so I KNOW it hurt)...we were only supposed to be sealing the back teeth and seeing how much we could do with the front - which I assume was just testing the water in terms of how she would react -- not sanding away on the surface and opening spaces between the teeth with no pain relief at all whatsoever.
Anyway, any ideas on how I can gently encourage my baby to allow us to brush her teeth? She is still night nursing and I need to be able to clean her teeth before the decay sets in again.
