Teething trouble

In the last couple months, I have become more and more resigned to the idea that this conception thing is just not going to happen on its own. So while I made a half hearted attempt in the month following the HSG to chart my temps and so forth, since then I have been more or less treating the whole thing with an indifferent shug of the shoulders.

Not for me the monitoring of every twinge, or the scrutinising of every craving. Instead of scanning the night sky for the shooting stars of pregnancy symptoms, I have been shuffling along with my eyes on the cracks in the pavement. I figure if the comet is big enough, a piece of it will plummet through the atmosphere and hit me on the head anyway.

However. There have been two stange occurrences perhaps worth mentioning. The first happened the other day as I was sitting at my desk, looking at the healthy apple in front of me, wishing it would magically turn into a bar of chocolate. All of a sudden there was this...seismic rumbling in my nether regions. It only happened once, briefly, and felt very peculiar. I'm about halfway into the two week wait,and have never experienced anything quite like it before. Or at least not since I started paying attention. But it's probably nothing.

The other thing is more of an ongoing phenemenon, and is also rather odd. My teeth have become extremely sensitive to hot and cold. I bit into my sandwich yesterday, and suddenly my whole mouth was filled with raw nerve endings screaming for mercy.

Again, more than it being a sign of pregnancy, I attribute this to the fact that I am well overdue for a visit to the dentist. I blame this unfortunate lapse in dental care on my father.

You see, for the past couple years, I have been going to the family dentist in Florida at least once annually whenever I came home for a visit. I like this dentist- she's a bouncy, jolly woman about my age with the most brilliantly white pearly gnashers you could ever hope to see. It seemed as if she liked me too, apart from the initial blip in our relationship when I opened my mouth during the first exam.

"Agggghh!" she screamed so loudly that staff came running into the room to see if she was being assaulted.

"Problem?" I drooled into my bib.

"What is THAT?" she cried, "That enormous silver filling on your left back tooth. It's the size of SIBERIA."

"Ah, yes" I dribbled. "Welcome to the world of Scottish dentistry. They did that to me last year. Pretty unsightly, huh?"

"We'll fix that," she muttered grimly, marking my chart.

From then on, every time I went back, I was subjected to a relentless barrage of treatments to restore my teeth to pristine white fillings. I put up with this, even though it was becoming a bit wearisome and unnecessarily expensive, because although a bit on the Heavy Metal side, the Scottish fillings are basically OK. And I come to Florida to see the parents and hang out on the boat dock, not lie in the dental chair.

Anyway, during my last visit n November, I broached the subject of making an appointment to see the dentist. My mother winced.

"We can't go back there," she moaned.

"Whyever not?" I asked with some surprise.

Turns out that during the hurricanes, my parents ended up in close evacuation quarters with another local couple. To while away the time between gusts, the talk inevitably turned gossip about various mutual acquaintances, including the dentist, who happened to live in the same condo development as this couple. And this couple knew lots and lots of very interesting things about my dentist, which they happily imparted to my parents.

So. The next time my dad went to the dentist's office, what does he do? What, indeed. He blurts out all this salacious hurricane-gossip, to the complete and utter mortification of the dentist. Apparently my dad's foot was so far inside his mouth by the end of his indiscrete comments that it had to be surgically removed so the dentist could resume work on his teeth.

To this day, I will never know what possessed him. My dad is possibly one of the most shy, taciturn people I have ever met. Having a conversation with him can be like...well...pulling teeth. It was wholly uncharacteristic of him to be so...chatty.

The only explanation I can think of is down to my father having worked with this dentist for some months now, undergoing months of long term dental restoration, some of which had become rather harrowing. Like the time he accidentally swallowed the expensive custom made filling the dentist was trying to fit. I guess after you've been sent home by your dentist with a pair of rubber gloves and an order to "recover the goods", you reach the point where it seems like a little friendly banter between pals can do no harm.

Anyway, my parents are too embarrassed to go back to that dentist, and frankly after all that, I'd prefer to steer clear myself. Maybe it's time to think again about finding a Scottish dentist, even if they are a little heavy handed with the mercury.

In the meantime, I shall try not to take the strange feeling in my mouth as portending anything signficant. I will simply grin and bear it.