Ellie's First Dentist Visit

Last Friday Ellie finally had her first dentist appointment. I say finally because she has been talking about going to the dentist for months. Last fall she learned about different occupations at school - one of which being a dentist - and ever since then, she's talked about having the dentist 'check out her teeth'. If she ever sees camera film now too, she thinks they are teeth x-rays. I wanted to wait until she was at least 3, because despite her excitement, I was a bit skeptical that it would go well. We had an appointment scheduled about a month ago originally, and it happened that her appointment was on the morning of one of our worst snow storms and the dentist office closed. So we had to reschedule which put us out a month later!

Finally it came, and she was excited right up until we got there. When we started walking in from the parking lot though, I could sense a little apprehension. When we walked in too, she told me that she wanted a 'lady Doctor' - not sure where this came from (maybe because our Pediatrician is female), but I then really wondered how it was going to go knowing our Dentist is male. She did really good in the waiting room and then back we walked to the dentist chair. Ellie jumped right up, and the hygienist was really nice showing her all the tools they were going to use. Ellie did pretty good opening her mouth and the hygienist was able to count all 20 of her teeth. She then attempted to clean them with the polishing brush - Ellie didn't like that so much so the hygienist then finished up with a regular toothbrush. She let her poke at her teeth a little bit more, and then it was time for the Doctor to come in. As I kind of thought, Ellie didn't want anything to do with the Doctor. She jumped out of the chair on my lap. I attempted to sit in the chair with her, but that really wasn't working. You could tell this wasn't the first time the Doctor had experienced this (I felt bad!), but he just said, no problem, we'll try again in 6 months. Ellie was very happy to take home a new toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, and a princess wand from the treasure chest! She carried the wand around all day! =) After her appointment, we went to Atlanta Bread for breakfast before I dropped her off at school and then headed to work for a shorter day. It was a fun morning =)

Checking out all the dentist tools



Looking at her teeth in the mirror



Opening up for the hygienist - the light was so bright, my picture kept turning out black. Ellie got to wear cool shades!