Unfortunately I have lots of experience here!

My dentist generally recommends taking your baby to the dentist for the first time (after it's teeth erupt of course) when you have your normal yearly check up, to slowly get them used to someone looking at their teeth. All he does is have a look in their mouth and that is it - no tools, nothing, just so they get used to the idea. Other suggestions include getting a little torch to look in their mouth and explain the dentist will have a look at their teeth, inside their mouth. My dentist even has pretend dental mirrors made of plastic and reflective paper so you can play at home.

If you get to the dentist and the child is upset, stop - you don't want their first experiences to be bad or all future visits will be difficult too, as they will remember how traumatic it was. So if they are not obliging, then stop and try another day, just practice looking in their mouth and things like that.

I actually found Marisa to be completely against a woman dentist looking at her teeth, but once she had a male dentist, she actually laid back and let him look! She had her head in my lap and the dentist was lovely - he was a paediatric dentist though as Marisa had very early signs of decay in a back tooth - when I helped to wean her at 2 years I would give her a weak bottle of milo as distraction and she'd often fall asleep with it. Wont do that again! It was so traumatic and I had major mother guilt, you can read the full story in this forum somewhere, it was around 9-10 months ago.

It's not going to be as bad as you think, I promise! But just don't let the dentist force the little one to do anything or you'll probably find trouble going to the dentist next time.

Good luck!