Feeding to sleep and teeth

[WhenCanISleepAgain]

DS (11 months) feeds to sleep and wakes up anywhere from 2-4x a night to feed. I can’t see this stopping anytime soon. Do we need to worry about tooth decay? We brush his teeth before he goes to bed - before I then feed him to sleep.

Breast or bottle?

Breast

I understand the jury is still out on how much damage night time feeding does to teeth - lots of dentists are very anti.

Apologies for asking you a question amsf then disappearing!

Purely anecdotally, I am still BF DH who is three. He doesn't BF at night anymore (self night weaned at around two) but almost always give him a quick feed before sleep after he's had his teeth brushed (he will fall asleep without, it's just much faster and relaxing feeding him!).

We took him to the dentist and didn't mention bf to see what she would say and she said his teeth were great and there were no problems so that's good enough for me!

Jesus Christ... I'm bf DS not DH!

Thanks for clarifying Paradise I’ll ask when I am next at the dentist just to see what he says but suspect we will continue as we are.

We fed at night until 18 months or so
We have been to the dentist a few times and he is fine, he is 2

The way I see it is that my DC doesn't eat (processed)
sugar and we brush twice a day. He only drinks water and milk.

Ideally he shouldn't eat fruit throughout the day, instead have it with meals. And probably not have milk at night.

But we found a compromise that works for us. Healthy diet, brushing and hope for the best.

In my opinion fruit juice during the day is worse than breastmilk at night. Also, the way they drink it, the nipple goes quite far back so it is not the constant flowing on the teeth

No, I'm in a pretty knowledgeable LLL group, it's fine.

Ds fed through the night till nearly 3 when I night weaned. Aged six his teeth are fine. Bf actually spaces the teeth from the sucking motion so actually longer term less cavities.

I fed till 3.5 and no fillings in my 40's, well spaced teeth.

It's actually more to do with bone density of the teeth which can be affected by lack of vit do so just make sure you give this in drops. (I keep forgetting...)

Also, brushing teeth before any food/ drink is good as removes the bacteria. So it's fine.

With breastfeeding, the milk doesn't really go on the teeth as it goes further back, so generally breastfeeding isn't an issue for teeth.

It is my understanding that bottles are bad for the teeth because the milk pools in the mouth and spends longer in contact with the teeth. A bottle of expressed breast milk is no better for the teeth than a bottle of formula but in direct breastfeeding the milk enters the mouth at the soft palate, much further back and quite far from the teeth.

@theresaspiderinthesink how interesting about the spacing thank you

Thanks for the reassurance everyone!

Ridiculously long text as it's from a pod cast but Katy Bowman explains it in here (quite feat down!:

www.nutritiousmovement.com/podcast-transcript-ep-51-babies-and-movement-part-2/

That's really interesting @theresaspiderinthesink and makes sense.

Our dentist was also very pleased with the spacing of DS's teeth.