photo credit: Alessandro Perilli

Fact or Fiction?

Last night my husband got a call from a close friend who has 2 little girls ages 4 and 2.

He was looking for a referral for a baby dentist. It turns out that his 4 year old has two cavities–one behind each front tooth–and they need to be filled.

Now this sounds bad enough–but it gets worse.

Because a toddler will not sit still long enough to fill a cavity, the dentist will need to put her completely under to execute this procedure.

Can it get worse?

Yes.

It will cost them $4,000.

Her parents feel so awful about the whole thing because–and I know many of you will find this hard to believe–no one ever told them that you were not supposed to let your baby fall asleep with bottles of milk.

They HAD heard about the dangers of letting your baby fall asleep with bottles of juice, but the milk thing alluded them because they didn’t know that milk has sugars in it.

When I heard this story, I had to blog about it just in case I could enlighten even one more parent who might be in the dark about this. As it turns out, it seems like not having this data may not be so unusual after all.

Milk, formula, and breast milk ALL have sugar. It’s called LACTOSE. In fact, anytime you see an ingredient in any food/drink ending in “-ose”, you can be sure it is some form of sugar. (Not that there is an ingredient list or “food facts” label on your breast milk, but still, you get my point.)

I don’t know where I’d heard it for the first time, but somehow I knew that bottles with juice or milk should never be given with unless the child is going to drink it down right away.

Letting the baby fall asleep with such a bottle (or breast) in his mouth allows the sugary liquid to pool in his mouth behind his teeth. If this is done continually, it can obviously begin to erode the teeth and cause cavities. After all, those baby teeth are very small and vulnerable.

When my pediatrician told us at our son’s one year check-up to knock off all bottles (except for those with water) for the sake of his teeth, I have to admit, I thought he was being a little “Dr. Doom-ish”, but I did take it to heart and I am doing my best to keep the milk in the sippy cup and only the water in the bottle.

As soon as I started to make this switch, I realized how FAST he drinks down a sippy! It was amazing. It takes him all of 3 minutes to gulp down a sippy whereas a bottle he will nurse for 20 minutes, maybe more. Seeing this quickly taught me the difference between using the sippy and the bottle when at first glance, I really didn’t see point in making the switch.

I won’t lie, there are PLENTY of times when Phoenix cries for the bottle with MILK and I give in–PLENTY of times. But he knows that for naps, it’s water ONLY and he is satisfied with that.

Whew.

Hope this helps.