This week was the monthly meeting of my local breastfeeding support group. This month we had a local family dentist talk about dental health for breastfed babies. It was a great meeting with a lot of give and take between us moms and the dentist.
I was surprised when our dentist visitor said the ADA recommends children start seeing a dentist at a year. My pediatrician has always said it’s not necessary until adult teeth come in, though he recommends earlier and this dentist said she likes to start seeing children around age 3 since before this time most children won’t tolerate a check anyways.
Honeybun has been to the dentist twice but I have yet to take Sugarplum. We were seeing my dentist at home in Colorado and he recently retired and we’ve yet to find a dentist here in Florida (add it to the to-do list!).
She pointed out that many of the “healthy” snacks we give our little ones such as dried fruit and dissolvable puffs leave residue on the teeth. She also explained that breastmilk has a lot of sugars in it (lactose) and that combined with the little foods babies tend to eat can cause cavities and extreme plaque buildup in very young children if appropriate care is not taken.
She also explained it’s important to wipe even newborn’s gums after feeding to remove the excess milk and get them used to having someone poking around in their mouth so once their teeth are in, they will better tolerate brushing. This totally makes sense but seems a bit over the top for me though I will probably start regular teeth brushing with Doodle when his teeth first come in.
We began brushing Honeybun’s teeth each night before bed when she was about 8 months old. She got to the point where she wasn’t nursing to sleep anymore and needed a solid bedtime routine. Since we aren’t the bath before bed every night types, we took on tooth brushing. I honestly don’t remember when we started brushing Suarplum’s teeth, but probably closer to a year since she was later getting most of her teeth.
I also know we should probably up our daily teeth brushing with the girls up to at least twice a day, not just before bed as we’ve been doing for 4 ½ years and I need to be more persistent with making the girls allow me to help. They love to brush themselves and I too often give into them and let them do it though I know they are not doing a good enough job. Of course, building good life habits starts when kids are young!
