I know why dentists are so cautious of pregnant women. In a word: LIABILITY. Plus probably their training regarding pregnant women, which according to my dentist is to never do anything unless you really have to.
Liability has, of course, a few sides: a genuine caution about the issue at hand, a distressingly well-founded fear of litigation, and the paranoid fear most pregnant women - egged on by society, stupid books, ill-informed medical professionals, and a truly useless drug rating system - have of, well, everything. Another pregnant mom asked me today, in tones of incredulity, if it was safe to have a root canal while pregnant. I was tempted to say, "No! It might kill my baby! But I did it anyways!" (In fact, novocaine is considered very safe, and so are most opiates, in moderation- five days of vic0din isn't going to do anything terrible to my preshus.)
All the same, the midwife was right: Get over it. I had to bully the dentist into filling a small cavity on the other side- next week- because... surely it could wait another six months. Or! They could do this totally safe procedure NOW!
In any event, I feel that the root canal was much like childbirth: by the time you get around to it, you're so uncomfortable that everything after is an improvement.
Do you ever just want to say to people who question what you decide to do as a pregnant woman, "I'm not an idiot, you know. I do have a PhD and I didn't get it by sleeping with my committee." I can't wait until I am more visibly pregnant and people start giving me the evil eye whenever I have a glass of ice tea.
ReplyDelete@Elisabeth: No. Usually I want to say something MUCH ruder. :) And hey! Just wait until you're drinking, say, 3 oz of beer! (Actually nobody here even gave me the evil eye. It's the land of Beer, after all.)
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