Pediatric Dentists are Weaners part 1

When my oldest, Kathleen, was 10 months old, she got her first tooth. That's fairly late, but well within the normal range. At 18 months, we noticed a tiny circle on the front of one of her top incisors. It was the exact same color as the rest of her tooth. I pointed it out to her pediatrician at a well check-up. The doctor said that a spot like that could have been caused by a high fever, and since Kathleen had fought off a virus that caused a week of fevers, we agreed that the tooth was nothing to worry about. I put it out of my mind until a couple of months later. A tiny tan dot appeared inside of the circle. A week later, while swimming with Kathleen in my arms, I noticed that her tooth had cracked off at an angle below the circle!

We immediately made an appointment with a local pediatric dentist. They are a big name around here, with a playground to rival the fancy McDonalds one. The office even has an animal mascot who rides in Mardi Gras parades. Both of us went to the appointment, which is good because I don't think I could have accurately conveyed how horrible they were to my husband had he not been there to witness it.

The dentist was a woman in her mid to late thirties. She took no time to smile at or talk to our BABY before asking Adam to hold her down in his lap. Kathleen was crying before the dentist had even begun. She took one look into my 20 month old's mouth and announced that she was riddled with cavities! She wanted to point out everything to us in slow motion, but I couldn't bear to have my daughter held upside down and screaming. The horrible woman told us that we had two options:

1. Bring Kathleen into the office for at least four visits where they would strap her down and crown her teeth (if parents insisted on being present, they would have to make a "special" appointment, but they discouraged that).
2. Have all of the work done at once under general anesthesia at Children's Hospital.

The fact that #1 was even an option, and that they didn't really want the parents to go in the back with their BABIES was enough for us to know that this dentist wasn't for us. What came next was almost worse. The dentist looked me straight in the eye and told me that it was my fault that Kathleen had cavities at all because I nursed her past a year. She told me that I must wean immediately to avoid causing more damage. I was so nervous and upset that I could think of no defense. I mentioned that I was pregnant again and would be weaning at some point (I didn't say when). We told them we'd have to go home and discuss everything, but that if we decided to go ahead with their treatment plan, we would choose option #2.

I cried all the way home from the office. Adam tried to console me, and as soon as we walked in our front door, he made an appointment for a second opinion with another pediatric dentist in town. I was so scared of bringing Kathleen to the hospital to have dental work, and I felt awful that the dentist might be right about this all being my fault.

The next dentist was very nice. She didn't blame me directly, but suggested that with my next baby, I give him a few sips if water or sucks on a pacifier after nursing at night. She said that babies don't swallow when they night nurse and that milk pools behind their teeth. I didn't know it at the time, but she was wrong. She concurred with the other dentist's diagnosis and treatment options, although she encouraged parents to be present if they chose to do the work in the office.

We were stupid and scared. We thought that this was an emergency, that we would be harming our child by waiting. We thought that our only options were to see a pediatric dentist, and we had already gone through the two in town. We thought that since our new dentist had worked at the other place and chosen to leave them that it meant she was different from them. We were fooled by her kind demeanor and rapport with our baby. When I think back to that day, and the ones that followed, I feel ashamed and a strong sense that I failed my daughter.