Pain Releif - Who Needs It!? :0)

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I hate going to the dentist. So much so that I have managed to avoid the reclining surgery chair for over 13 years. There’s something about a stranger shoving their hands, cotton wool swabs, drills and other mental instruments into your mouth that makes me feel somewhat vulnerable and deeply uncomfortable.

When you are pregnant you get free dental care until your baby is 12 months old, so I have had it on my ‘to-do list’ for the past 6 and a half months to make an appointment. I finally got round to going last week, where I was met by a lovely young lady, not much older than myself, who introduced herself as ‘the dentist.’ She couldn’t believe that I had avoided any dental treatment for so long, and sat there laughing in disbelief. To be honest I have never been in any pain, so I have never really got round to going. She told me that I needed some fillings (my worst nightmare – mercury, one of the substances that I have spent so long trying to rid from my body!) However, she told me that I had got off very lightly only needing a few shallow ones, and that most people what have needed extensive dental work on this basis. The answer really is not to eat refined sugar – isn’t it?

She offered me white (non-mercury) fillings as I was pregnant, which I was pleasantly surprised about. When she started explaining the dental procedure to me I started hearing words such as ‘pain relief injection’ etc, etc. In other words, pharmaceutical drugs, something that I only want in my body if my life, or my baby’s life literally depended on it as a last resort, not for routine dental work, for teeth that don’t even hurt. Now I have a little bubba relying on me to keep healthy and be able to grow big and strong, even more reason not to want unnatural chemicals intravenously injected into me. What would be the point in aiming for a drug free birth, if I go and have drugs for a couple of fillings that I apparently need.

It was on this basis I decided to have the white fillings, but declined the pain relief – good practise in advance for natural birthing, as it was only going to take 30 mins.

So yesterday I had 2 white fillings and lots of loud drilling without a drop of pain relief. The dentist was very supportive of my choice, although I think that she thought it was because I was scared of needles, as opposed being afraid of the content of the syringe! It went really well, and I woke up this morning as right as rain.