Today Gabriel had his first cavity filled, and it was quite an experience. He was nervous going into it, but I assured him I would be there to hold his hand and help him through it. The part where he showed the most fear was just getting up in the chair and lying down. I guess it makes sense. That's basically the moment of handing over all control to the dentist. But as long as I let him hold tightly to my arm, he still did everything he was nervous about.
I have to say I'm so glad that I took him to a specifically pediatric dentist instead of our family one. They had everything to make it easy on him and were so wonderful. Gabriel had a lot of questions about how they were going to fix his cavity. We had time to kill while he started getting the gas in his system, so the hygienist answered all his questions and even let him feel the stuff they were going to fill his cavity with. He felt how sticky and squishy it is at first and let him hold it while she shined the light or whatever on it to make it hard. She let him feel the special toothbrushes and through all of this, he also got to watch Paw Patrol!
The gas really helped his nerves and he loosened his grip on me. He even let go a few times to talk with his hands. The already very talkative boy became even more so and laughed a lot. We had to settle him down a little when it was time for the dentist to work. The dentist was a surprisingly young woman who was also very nice and tried to explain things to him as she went. There were a few times Mommy had to stop watching her work and look away, but we all made it through just fine. Gabriel walked away with a sugarless lollipop, a balloon, and TWO tokens to get prizes on the way out. (He used them both for bouncy balls.)
Afterward his mouth felt funny which wasn't a big deal at first. But the longer it felt that way, the more it upset him. He kept wanting to scratch his lip, thinking it would help, and even made it bleed a little. So I held him while he cried about how much he didn't like it and how he wanted to scratch it until he fell asleep. He was able to sleep off the numbness and was much happier after that.
Later, Jeff wanted to take the kids to a Halloween shop. It's something he loves to do every year, but it's not always easy because a lot of the decorations scare the kids. Tonight, Lily and Gabriel both got to the entrance and decided there was no way they were going in. After Jeff agreed to hold both Lily and Gideon so Lily could close her eyes, she agreed to go in while I stayed out with Gabriel. He was legitimately terrified, and I didn't want to pressure him to do something he was uncomfortable about. But when everyone else went in, he got curious.
He built up his courage and told me he would look in the window. He marched right up to it and tried his darnedest to ignore the creepy scarecrow in front of him and just look at the decorations by the checkout line. He saw some fake spiderwebs like the ones he made sure we already put up at our house a couple weeks ago, but there were green ones! I told him I wasn't sure, but those ones might glow in the dark. He decided he MUST tell Lily and Daddy about the spiderwebs. He held my hand and made a careful path into the store, far away from the scary things, and to the others. It's almost impossible to completely avoid scary things in those stores and there were a few times I heard him quietly say to himself, "I can do this." I'm so proud of him.
Lily, on the other hand, may have started out scared, but she got curious and wanted to investigate some things that Gabriel wouldn't even go near. Gideon seemed to be on the fence about the whole experience. Maybe he'll have more of an opinion next year.
