Those of you who know me well know how much I despise the dentist. I horrible experiences with them as a child, not because they did things wrong, but just because I didn’t like what they had to do. When I had kids I told myself I wasn’t going to let my true feelings of the dentist show through so that they could make their own opinions and so far they like him just fine. Great. Good for them.

Lindsay had her first big deal appointment with the dentist at the end of February and I think I was more nervous about the whole thing than she was. Lindsay has always had a gap between her two front teeth, as long as I can remember. I never thought much about it until we went to the dentist two years ago and he said that her frenulum, the muscle that connects your lip to your gums, was really low and that’s what was causing the gap. He said to just wait until her permanent teeth come in to see if there was still a gap and if there was, then we would probably want to get it snipped. But this all came from the dentist who said Logan’s teeth were going to crumble and fall out of his head before he was two. Not so much. I got a second opinion about that (thanks again Niki!) but never about Lindsay’s frenulum. So, I finally decided to see what our current dentist thought about it because I trust his opinion. He pretty much said the same thing as the other dentist. We could cut it now and just get it done and over with, or we could wait until her permanent teeth come in to see if they fill in the gap themselves because permanent teeth are generally bigger than baby teeth. He was genuinely okay with whatever we decided to do. That’s why I love this man. He’s not pushy at all and gives us all of the information and lets us make our own decision. We decided to go ahead and do it now because most likely we’d have to have it done anyway even if she got braces. Depending on how thick the frenulum is, even if she got braces and her teeth were together, it could cause her teeth to separate again, meaning the braceless were pointless.

So, we made an appointment. She couldn’t eat or drink anything after midnight and because of that we took her cup that she sleeps with out of her bed after she fell asleep. She woke up at about 2:30 in the morning crying because she was so thirsty. And she told Jeffy, “But daddy, won’t I die if I don’t drink anything?” So sad!!! He got her calmed down and then she was okay the rest of the morning. She didn’t even seem to be that nervous once we got to the dentist office. They gave her an oral relaxant that she just had to drink and then let her sit in this little room with a TV while she started to get sleepy. We had Logan with us so while Jeffy laid with her, I took Logan out to the waiting room and entertained him. He actually made a friend with another little boy there and they played really well together. Jeffy and I had discussed ahead of time that he would need to be the one to go into the room with her because there was no way I could handle that. Luckily, when we asked her which one of us she wanted to go with her, she pointed to Jeff. Phew!

Anyway, after about an hour of letting the relaxant kick in, they took her into the room and put some numbing cream on the frenulum and then gave her a shot and some laughing gas. At this point, I came in to check on her and she was so out of it, but doing so good and laying there so still. Jeff said she did an amazing job and did whatever they asked her to do. The procedure was more involved than I had anticipated. I thought it was going to be a simple snip, but they actually cut out a big chunk of the frenulum. After he was done with that he put in two stitches and she was done. Jeff ended up getting sick to his stomach during the procedure and had to lay down on the floor, all the while holding Lindsay’s hand and telling her she was doing great. He’s such a good daddy. Afterwards, I took her home and she slept for about 3 hours and when she woke up she had lots of pudding and yogurt. She was super tired all day long and even after her 3 hour nap she couldn’t wait to go to bed. Poor thing. It doesn’t look dramatically different, but because I know about it, I think her smile looks a little bigger. She’s beautiful as ever and I’m glad we did it. I tried to get before and after shots so you can see the difference, but it was hard. These were the best I could get.

Before

You can see how far down the muscle connects to her gums. It was actually starting to roll underneath her gum to the back, which was something I had noticed in the last couple of weeks.

After

Can you tell that it’s not there at all? Where the frenulum used to be is still a darker red than the rest of her gums, but it’s not there anymore. She can definitely lift her lip up higher than she could before. Wild stuff!