A Few Thoughts on Dentistry

And no, I am not going to share photos of my teeth or dental visits. For teeth photos, visit my friend Kendra.

So instead, I'll share photos of the digital pages I've been creating. I've been doing a little paper-less experimenting, along with my friend Hilary. Check out the album on the side of her blog, it has her first few digital pages as well.

A little background, for those of you who don't actually know me. I'm 32 and I've been married 12 years. I got pregnant on my honeymoon and subsequently gave birth to eight babies in nine years. Oh, and we adopted two babies in those nine years as well. So you can see how, perhaps, a trip to the dentist might entail some finely tuned logistics for me. First of all, I'm not real keen on x-rays while pregnant. Nor am I keen on leaving my breastfed baby for hours while I get my mouth worked on. So dental visits for me (other than emergencies) needed to be squeezed into the very small window of time between being able to leave said breastfed baby and me being pregnant with the next baby. So say, between months six and eight in any given baby's life.

I can remember on three different occassions, walking into a a dentist office with one of my babies (Judah, Tilly and Hezekiah) and babysitter, and tellling the receptionist, "My baby is only (fill in the blank- four weeks, two months, etc) and so if he begins to cry, I may have to come out and nurse him. I seriously didn't even have time to sit down in the waiting room before they had me back for an exam.

Anyway, now that Avi and Tucker are two, and we have dental insurance, I am trying to make up for about 12 years of dental neglect. And they are not making it easy on me. Remember my "failed root canal" now fixed? That one tooth will represent at least five visits to the dentist by the time it is over. Once for the regular dentist to look at it (needs a root canal), once for the specialist to look at it (yes, it does need a root canal), once for the actual root canal, and now at least two more visits to get a crown put on it. The specialist was very adamant that I get this crowned soon. He even gave me written instructions not to chew on that side, etc, until the crown is in place. So when I called my dentist, the earliest I could get in was January 29th! That seems like an awfully long time to not chew on one side of my mouth! And I can't even get in for thorough exam and consultation on the rest of my teeth until February 12! And these dentist wonder why I have neglected my teeth?!

At this rate, I could easily conceive and give birth before we even put a dent in the work that needs to be done in my mouth. Now, if you read my blog I am sure you know what little angels my offspring are. So you would think that finding a babysitter would be a breeze :) But how do you find a babysitter, who is perhaps not even older than your oldest child? Because you just adopted your oldest child from Africa and she is just learning about everything in this country and can't possibly be left alone, much less in charge...You can see its an odd situation to be in. So far, I call good ole mom, who at this point is probably looking into condos in southern Florida. Far far away from us...

Comments

[Naomi]

Love the pages! Where did you get the kit? I want to download it.

Naomi

[Stacy]

~Sighing for you about the dentist~

I've had my own dentist woes this week. They haven't scheduled me for a root canal yet but they've said those words too frequently for these ears. Yikes!

Maybe it's because I hadn't been in... maybe... three or four *years*???

And I only have THREE kids.

~Stacy

[Stacy]

ps- I like your pages! :)

~Stacy

[TeamBettendorf]

Fabulous pages. Someday I aspire to do digital scrapbooking. I too have not been to a dentist in...well...Jenna was 3...so 9 years. Jeff was told he'd need $3500 (after insurance) work done in his mouth 9 years ago. So far all the teeth are still in his head and pain free.

We did make some changes to our diet following the www.westonaprice.org stuff and now kids and adults alike have amazing self healing teeth. Jeff has one tooth that is re-enamalizing OVER the filling and another that the filling just dropped out and the tooth underneath is fine!! My son Jacob also lost a cap and his tooth causes no pain.

Hoorah for the Cod Liver Oil, bone broth soups and Raw Milk WestonAPrice recommends.

[Kara]

I'd be willing to help babysit. I hadn't been to the dentist in 16 years and the "only" thing wrong was an impacted wisdom tooth. 8 months later I was finally pain and infection free. It just happened to act up during the only time during my marriage that I wasn't pregnant or nursing. In fact Cam weaned the week before I was supposed to have the surgery done.

[Joyce T.]

Lovely scrapbook pages, Renee. :)
Hooray for your mom. She's a great one, she is.
Glad you're finally getting that dental work done. I could say ditto. :)

[Hilary]

Love the pages! Nice work. I did two more last night (in the same cubscouts album on my blog), and am liking them so much more the simpler I make them. Learning new tricks as I "play", too!

It makes me feel better to read the comments on here and know I'm not the only one with neglected dental issues!

[Mrs. Taft]

Nice pages! :D Hope your dental woes get figured out soon :O

[Mrs. Taft]

ps I'd offer to babysit but...number 1 you don't me from Adam, and number 2, Seattle is kinda far away from where you apparently live :P LOL!

[Lindsay]

Maybe Ellen and Keziah could tag-team it?