I hate this term, and I hate that I adhere to it completely by nature, but I am going to out myself. I largely adhere to attachment parenting. This meant that my little PJ slept with me nightly for three years of his life, and still comes into my bed most nights, and he nursed until he was 2 and half, now that puts many parents to shame, but it also isn't nearly as long as some mothers choose to nurse. If your going to judge me or anyone for that, JUST DON'T IT IS NOT YOUR BUSINESS. We are all just trying to do the best we can though
...Well sigh, I got distracted while writing that. And now that its a week later, I will get to the point, and refocus this post. (me focus HAHAHA)
Last Friday, my little man had to get some dental work done. He has soft enamel. On top of that my allowing him to breast feed for a somewhat extended period of time didn't help. I brushed his teeth (most of the time) but he had to have something fixed on each of his teeth. The good news is that the work done ended up being much less serious than they have anticipated. It was still time consuming and they put him under general anesthesia for the procedure.
It was by far the scariest decision I have had to make for him. It took a lot of weighing logic versus comfort versus common sense. I ultimately decided it wouldn't be worth it to make him go in for 6 different visits, and likely ruining his enjoyment of going to the dentist in the process. We had to do the continual visits to the doctors for nearly a year while he was diagnosed failure to thrive. It wasnt easy, by the time we were done with that he hated the scale. He's much better about it now two years later (also two years without monthly visits to the doctors for weigh ins).
I think as a parent one of the hardest things is trusting your intuition. My little PJ was absolutely fine, and I am ultimately pleased with the decision I made, but I did my research and made sure I trusted the doctors who were involved. I was lucky to have people who supported my decision and tried to support me. Thats whats the most important, there is so much internal second guessing that happens with me (and I would imagine most parents) when it comes to the health of our children so anyone who makes that more difficult (who has very little actual regard for the child) should be banned from life. Judging people for the tough decisions they make will never make them feel better. Ultimately you have to follow your gut and hope that the path is clear.
In other news BRUSH YOUR KIDS TEETH AND TAKE THEM TO THE DENTIST!!! Man its expensive to not.... I know theres a straw in the way (for chocolate milk) but they are so much smoother now that they dont have patches of enamel missing. He did so well and I am so proud of him!
