Motherhood

Wednesday was traumatic.

Naomi’s orthodontist had decided that what she needed next was to have her two upper canine teeth pulled. He had been to a conference in Brisbane which had offered data suggesting that if those teeth are late coming out, they can mess with the incoming mature teeth and push them around. We checked with our favorite dentist in the US, who happens to be Michael’s father. Yep, Dr. B said, that sounded right. The removal of two teeth that would fall out anyway, he said, could save us $7000 in orthodonture in the future. Bring on the Novocain!

Naomi had been totally cool about this idea for the several weeks since we found out about it. Until, of course, the week of the appointment. At which point, she freaked out. Michael had asked me what we’d do if Naomi wouldn’t go. “Wouldn’t go?” I scoffed. “She doesn’t have the choices here!” Michael, reassured by my confidence, felt pleased that I would deal with it.

So it was that I found myself in the minivan in the parking lot with Naomi as Michael went inside to check her in to the dentist and she quietly refused to unbuckle her seatbelt. She was not going in. She knew what was in that office. There would be needles and there would be blood and she had heard about a terrible sound that comes when they pull the tooth out. No way was she going in. Hmm, so this is what Michael meant. I cajoled. I reasoned. I reached over to bodily move her from the car and she scampered back to a place she knew I couldn’t lift her from. Then, using all of my negotiation skills—which I teach others to use, if not in quite this way—I began to bribe her shamelessly. I talked about the excellence of the drugs that they’d use to kill the pain. I promised her a new pair of jeans which would make her the envy of her friends. I pointed out that if I had to carry her screaming into the dentist’s office, she’d be so embarrassed as the local high school had just gotten out and teenagers in uniforms were milling about everywhere. There—drugs, bribery, and shame all in the course of 60 seconds. If she had kept resisting, I was willing to take out my wallet and start peeling off 20s. “Ok kid, how much are we talking about here? What’s your price?” But she glanced at the high school students, muttered something about really really really nice jeans—she got to pick them and I didn’t have a say no matter what—and got out of the car.

The 5 minutes in the waiting room were interminable as I tried to keep the conversation going (“Look at the fish. I love fish don’t you? Which fish is the most beautiful?” blah blah blah) and tried to keep her from bolting. When she was in the dentist’s chair at last, bib around her head back, me holding her hand, that I finally heaved a sigh of relief. I had done it. I had gotten her to the chair. Now it was the dentist’s problem.

I took about two grateful breaths and looked around and panicked. Wait—it wasn’t just Naomi who was in the dentist’s room. It was ME. He was going to use needles and there would be blood and that horrible tooth-sucking sound of an extraction. And I was going to have to BE IN THE ROOM the whole time. In the midst of my panic, I held Naomi’s hand and told her calmly that I’d be there as long as she needed me, and if she wanted some time alone with the dentist I’d just slip out the door and be just outside. No, she wanted me to stay the whole time. I told her that if she fell asleep it would be no trouble at all and I’d just slip out the door. The dentist assured me that she wouldn’t fall asleep. I realised at that moment that I was stuck in there. Her hand was on mine like a death grip. Michael was useless to me unless I could get him to come and switch places. Where was that marital ESP that people talk about? “I NEED YOU I NEED YOU” I chanted in my head. “I’M GOING TO PASS OUT IN HERE.” No answer. I needed an emergency stop button, a bat phone.

I twisted in my chair and held her hand as I stared hard at the wall. Interesting that this fellow had gone to this seminar in Dunedin once. Sounded fascinating. (Hand me another one of those sponges” he told the nurse.) And he got a certificate too. (“Ok, the bigger ones I think now.”) Ah, and he’d been a dentist since 1979. (“No, the upper ones. Yes, both”) That was good. (“Ok, Naomi, now you’ll feel a little pressure.”) And what a lovely poster on the wall there. (“Bite down hard on the gauze now. Half way there.”) I wondered what would happen if I passed out, imagined the trajectory of my head onto the floor. I gave myself a variety of stern talking tos—this was Naomi’s pain not mine. Where was my motherly compassion? I tried reasoning with myself: Get a grip woman, you’ve been through childbirth twice yourself (yes, I answered, but only because I wasn’t allowed to be in the waiting room while it happened). And then, in the middle of all this noise in my head, the dentist smiled and pushed back from Naomi and told us she was finished. Finished!!

I stood up as he gave me directions about how to clean the wound, etc. My head got light and dizzy and I thought if he talked for one more minute I’d throw up on him. I wonder how many moms and dads do that. He stopped talking, I thanked him as graciously as I could as I bolted. I marched past Michael nervously in the waiting room with an, “She did great and now I’m just going to take her for fresh air,” and Naomi and I were outside, drinking big gulps of fresh air. She was touching her numbed lip and drooling blood. I was breathing from my belly and trying to say the alphabet backwards. In Spanish. We decided that the thing that would help most was to sit in the car with all the doors open and hold each other. Which we did.

Naomi recovered nearly instantly. At dinner that night she was chattering about how scared she was and how great the dentist was (all true) how now she knows all these things and giving advice to Aidan (who now desperately wants a tooth pulled). I was sobered by yet another piece of what it means to be a mother—that we don’t have to just work to protect them and raise them and teach them to put their napkins of their laps. We have to sit with them as they break their fingers (as Aidan did last year) and get their teeth pulled. And my heart opened for those parents who sit by bedsides of children who are actually sick, who are in real pain, with real needles and real surgery. How do they find the strength?

But life goes on. Last night at dinner she said, “Hey, I can feel my new tooth growing in already!” she poked her tongue in the hole. “Cool, I can feel it, it’s poking and its…no wait,” her expression changed. “Oh, it’s just a piece of broccoli.” She shrugged and walked off, her new jeans clinging to her wispy 10 year old body. I felt a surge of love so big it threatened to make me faint.