Bottle Rot

[MarinaVanessa]

Not trying to change the conversation, but where do you get the dye mouth rinse?

I got mine at Walmart. Walgreen sometimes has it too. There are also tablets that kids chew on and it colors their teeth then they brush their teeth until the color is gone (the color only sticks to film/dirty teeth)

[Unregistered]

My stepdaughter is 5 1/2 years old. I didn't meet her until a few months after her 3rd birthday but I found out later that she had been given a bottle with milk (vanilla soy milk, by the way, because she refused to drink regular white milk), juice, pop, and who knows what all else, until she was 3 and was put to bed with a of milk every night, and later a sippy cup of milk every night. Brushing was also not a priority.

About 6 months after DH and I started dating, when my stepdaughter was 3 1/2, we had to take her to to a hospital an hour away for her to be put under so a pediatric dentist could fill 11 cavities. This past February, so about 2 1/2 months before her 5th birthday, She started complaining of a tooth ache that wasn't going away. It turned out she had an abscessed tooth. When it was all said and done she had to have a kiddie root canal for the abscess, another kiddie root canal on another tooth that had a cavity that had gone through the enamel all the way to the pulp but hadn't become infected yet, another regular cavity filled, and 6 silver caps in the hopes that we can keep her teeth in her head until they are ready to be replaced by adult teeth. She did have another cavity in one of her front teeth but the dentist recommended waiting on that in the hopes that the tooth would fall out before it needed taken care of. She did lose her first tooth recently. We are hopeful it was the tooth with the cavity.

I actually had to yell at my MIL last spring because I caught her giving my stepdaughter a sippy cup of juice about 2 weeks before she turned 5. I told DH that if I ever caught her giving stepdaughter a sippy cup again I was handing her the dental bills from now on.

At one time I wondered why the pediatrician never mentioned anything thinking if the damage was that bad he should have noticed. But then I discovered that the pediatrician was incompetent. Stepdaughter also has sensory processing problems, developmental delays, ADHD, and anxiety and when questioned about why we needed to bring SD in for an office visit with the pediatrician for him to write a referral to a specialist for a condition she has had for 4 years that he ignored the doctor flat out told me that he had noticed that SD had been missing developmental milestones but he just chalked it up to her environment and didn't worry about it, note it in her chart, or so much as mention anything to either of her parents. Needless to say he is no longer SD's pediatrician.

[jenboo]

My ds is only 6 weeks old. He gets bottles of breastmilk for his night feedings. After each bottle I wipe his gums with a wash cloth.
I'm hoping that by starting so young, we won't have issues with teeth brushing later.

[NillaWafers]

My ds is only 6 weeks old. He gets bottles of breastmilk for his night feedings. After each bottle I wipe his gums with a wash cloth.
I'm hoping that by starting so young, we won't have issues with teeth brushing later.

Breastmilk doesn't cause tooth decay.

http://anationofmoms.com/2011/02/truth-or-myth-does-breast-milk-cause-caries.html

There are several other sources out there that back this up. The main reason is that breastmilk contains lactoferin which actually kills the bacteria that causes tooth decay.