>
> I just had this discussion with our pediatric dentist yesterday.  He
> is so
> pro-breastfeeding ( his wife breastfeeds indefinitely, co-sleeps,
> and he is
> the one who clips frenula when needed), but he still says that he
> sees
> "bottle mouth" in totally breastfed babies too often.    His
> solution is
> simple.  If the mom would only clean the baby's teeth before sleep
> time,
> this would prevent this problem. Gauze on her finger is enough.  He
> can feed
> on and off all night if he wants, but first wipe those excess
> bacteria from
> his teeth so that when milk does pool in the baby's mouth ( he says
> that he
> watches his baby and it definitely does pool in her mouth) it will
> not have
> all the bacteria from the day to feed on.  This sounds reasonable
> enough.
>

Our pediatric dentist, who seems to be relatively breastfeeding-friendly
(as in she never gave us an ultimatum or blamed our son's decay on
breastfeeding) says that it is the pooling itself that is problematic.
Now all my research shows that the baby draws the nipple far enough back
that the milk should go right down the throat w/o pooling, but I have
seen many a crusty milk puddle under my son's cheek to make me question
that.
Our solution has been to brush *very* well before bed, and then either
encourage Liam to come off the breast and roll over before he's totally
dead to the world *or* if he falls deeply asleep quickly to wiggle his
chin until I hear him swallow.  I will say that while the decay
profoundly accelerated from 18 mos to 26 mos, I haven't seen any further
decay since implementing the chin wiggle policy for the past 3 mos.

Sample size of 1.  FWIW...

Gina Gerboth

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