Pregnancy and Tooth Erosion

Pregnancy is not all it's cracked up to be . I envy women who have perfect pregnancies and deliveries. They never once throw up, much less get nauseous and they deliver with zero complications. Must be so nice...

I on the other hand always have a difficult pregnancy. Morning sickness plagues me from beginning to end. My first pregnancy was when I was very young, I found out I was pregnant 2 weeks after I turned 18. I had violent morning sickness all day. I remember crying because my dad had taken me through McDonald's and I paid for a Big Mac meal with the last 5 dollars I had. I ate it and immediately threw it all back up. It was so frustrating. All I wanted to do was be able to eat and not throw up. It got to the point where I would have to softly nibble on crackers the moment i woke up in the morning or I would immediately start dry heaving. I was so miserable. I thought for sure it would let up by month 3 but I was wrong!

I noticed around that time, that my teeth were becoming softer . I had developed soft white spots on many of my teeth. My dentist told me that my teeth were starting to decay . It was my enamel being eroded from all the vomiting I was doing. There was nothing I could do for it but get them filled and I'd probably be spending tens of thousands on my teeth during my lifetime. I took my vitamins and still forced myself to eat but it didn't matter, the damage had been done. By the time I was 6 months along, I had to have a back molar removed as it completely shattered in my mouth while I was eating. The pain of the exposed tooth was excruciating . I was so relieved to have that tooth pulled. There is an old saying:

"For every pregnancy, a woman will lose a tooth."

This was true for me. By the time I was 24, two of my teeth up front were turning gray. I tried my best not to smile and hid my mouth as much as I could. I was working part time at a retail store and always noticed people looking at my teeth. Men even turned me down and would talk about my smile. It was so embarrassing . I got called trailer trash, meth mouth, you name it, I heard it. I had never touched hard drugs and people had the impression I was a drug addict all because of my smile.

I finally got hired on full time and was able to get not only health insurance of my own for the first time in my life but also dental insurance for the first time ever. I was ecstatic . I quickly burned through it as after a teeth cleaning and getting my 2 teeth filled, I had capped out on my insurance. I had to wait a full year before I could do anything else. I needed so much work done. When I got pregnant again when I was 26, I had to have another molar removed, and then another one closer to the front removed as well .

Morning sickness came back with a vengeance and I was back to throwing up for 6 months. I didn't just throw up once a day like some uneducated people seem to think, morning sickness happens typically all day long, multiple times a day. Honestly, it's probably why I never gained more than 40 pounds while pregnant. I'm sure I probably would have gained more if I never threw up .

People who have never had to deal with the unfortunate reality of tooth erosion due to pregnancy have no real understanding of it. They think it's impossible and due to a lack of hygiene. It's not. If anything it's more genetic than anything. In my experience, It didn't help that it started for me at such a young age. By the time I was 29, My teeth looked horrendous. I refused to go out in public. I was so sick of people judging me for my smile, making assumptions about what kind of person I was when I simply could not afford to fix them. Dental work is insanely expensive.

A set of permanent veneers will cost you 20,000 dollars or more easily. Most people simply cannot afford it. I was able to get temporary veneers though. It changed my life completely. For the first time in my life, I smiled more than I have ever smiled. It was like a night and day difference. If only I had had them sooner. I still want my permanent veneers, but for now these will do quite nicely.