First of all, I want to say thank you to all the people who reached out to me after my last post. I got some lovely comments and emails from several friends who shared their experiences, their medical expertise, or just their love with me. It meant a lot, and it did help. So, really. Thank you.

At the dentist...AGAIN!

I am happy to inform you all that we made it through the sedation appointment today, which was also Valentine's Day. Sure enough they did have a cancellation come up pretty quickly and so we were happy to snatch up the appointment when the dentist's office called.

This time all four of us went in again, as they recommend having two parents at hand for the drive home {you'll see why later}. I was still nervous about those drugs when we arrived at the office at 8 a.m. this morning, but I was also resigned to our fate. So I prayed about it and left it in God's hands, the perfect place to leave your worries.

The sedatives were all mulled together in about a tablespoon's amount of banana flavored liquid. Eisley consumed it eagerly because a grape {sugar free, of course} lollipop was offered as a reward. 15-20 minutes, they told us, was what it would take for us to start to notice our daughter was intoxicated.

Intoxicated, indeed.

She got a bit of a drunk, mellow look about her and so they proceeded to prepare us all for fixing of the teeth. I did get some videos of her making her lollipop dance and rolling her eyes around groggily but I won't post them, for the sake of her privacy I guess. They're not that funny anyway...okay, we did laugh a few times.

I'll be honest, the first time Justin tried to lower her into the chair she started to complain, so I grabbed Violet and left quickly. Not only did they not want us all four of us Violet in the room during her appointment, but I just wasn't up for another frustrating, failed appointment. The dentist warned us, a good 15% of his sedation appointments fail because kids can STILL be crazy in the chair--which would have meant general anaesthesia at the hospital for us. I was fairly certain Eisley would be in that 15%. The dentist later told us that all the parents think that.

But by the time I got to the first stoplight Justin texted me a photo of Eisley, in the chair, with the nitrous oxide mask {I guess they still use it with the sedatives}, being worked on by the dentist. He said the drill was making her giggle.

Success!

Justin told me that she had even been fine with the shots of lidocane for numbing.

{So my daughter was sitting there with versed, demerol, vistaril, nitrous oxide, AND lidocane in her blood. All just because of a few cavities. Nice.}

I was shocked that by the time I got to the Starbucks drive-thru Justin texted me that they were done with one side and on to the other. By the time Viv and I made it back to the parking lot he texted me that they were in the recovery room and we could join them.

The calm before the storm.

 Everything appeared to be well but we had to wait until the drugs were out of her system before we could make our final exit.

It took about an hour and that hour proved to be an interesting one. While Eisley seemed content and calm when Viv and I arrived, the nurse warned us that the children often get a "second high" on these drugs and she might hallucinate. We'd see her reaching out for things that weren't there, they said.

Sure enough, 20 minutes in, Eisley boarded the emotional roller coaster and forced all of us by gunpoint to get on it with her.

She became very weepy, irritable, fussy. Who can blame her?

We felt sort of helpless, knowing all we could do was sit by and watch until her system worked the drugs off. We just tried to keep her comfortable and safe in the mean time. After reading my last post, a couple friends shared their similar experiences with their children coming down off meds after medical procedures. I'm so glad they did, because I was expecting the emotions and the rough time with it.

She did hit a point where she was reaching out for things in front of her, and speaking incoherently, but while that sounds amusing it really wasn't because it was mixed in with the weepy miserableness that was Eisley at that moment.

At one point Justin said to me, "This is what you're like after having a baby." I scowled at him a little but then laughed, it was true. The uncontrolled emotional ups and downs, I know what it's like.

Not so miserable here, but just trust me, it got bad.

We didn't quite have the "Is this real life?" experience that is so famous, she did say at one point, "I feel so...I feel...got."

Touché, Eisley.

Once her fog had passed they let us leave, but the emotions were still all over the place. Justin sat in the back in between the girls. The ride home was filled with crying, whining, anger, confusion, and a chocolate milkshake from McDonalds.

{It's a thing. My mom would always take us for a chocolate milkshake after dentist appointments, knowing we were hungry by then but our mouths were still numb. It helped.}

She was fussy and grumpy and nasty to her sister when we got home, but then she went straight to bed and has been tired and sleeping most of the day. Justin was supposed to go back to work but he called in, it was obvious to us that Eisley would have absolutely LOST IT if he had tried to bail.

She has her teeth fixed. All is well.

Thank you for your prayers and encouragement and putting up with my emotional mommy fretting.

Oh, and I have to hand it to Violet. She was a real trooper with being woken up two hours early, dragged to the dentists office where we had to sit around for over an hour, and she was so sweet worrying about Eisley while we drove to Starbucks and back. It was so cute to hear her asking about her sister. She even put up with a very grumpy Eisley {not that we blame her} when we got home.

Everything worked out.

I feel sort of stupid now for worrying so much about the sedatives, but what can you do?

Like I said, motherhood is complicated.

XO--Happy Valentine's Day!

Heather