Milk before bed now DD has a tooth?

[MummyWantsANewBag]

DD has her first tooth, cue panic about toothbrushes and toothpaste...

Someone told me she couldn't have a feed right before bed now as we'd need to brush her teeth afterwards before she went to sleep. Is this right?

i just used to brush their teeth in the bath then give them their milk when they come out

I don't think it's right to brush teeth directly after a feed. You should wait ten or twenty minutes to give the saliva a chance to cleanse the mouth.

My ds has had teeth since the age of four months, I brush his teeth before his last feed because he always falls asleep during his last feed.

sounds like rubbish to me. what are you supposed to do when they have a night feed? wake them up to brush their teeth

whoever told you that is just plain wrong imo!

Same as Belgo. My DDs all had teeth at 5-6 months, and were still feeiding through the night - I certainly wasn't going to brush their teeth after every feed.

As they stopped falling asleep on their last feed, then I started brushing teeth after milk.

phew! Thanks so much, didn't want to do the wrong thing but thought this would be making life much harder!

a friend of mine is a dental hygienist and we had this conversation a few yrs ago because someone had asked her, she said it's perfectly fine to drink milk after brushing teeth.

In fact the first aid guidance if you can't re-insert a knocked out tooth is to put it in a glass of milk, so milk can't be that bad!

HTH

just wanted to add to this as my 3 year old has just had 5 teeth out and still has 2 slightly bad ones at the front. the dentist from the hospital who took her teeth out said it was not only the bottle milk that does it but also breast milk aswell, ( i fed her for quite a long time.) and to stop bedtime bottles all together because the milk basically sticks to the teeth. which is easier said than done i know ,
but it is not a nice thing to watch your baby being knocked out in a operating room. i know my dd is older but as i found out trying to get a toddler out of a habit is very very hard.

Breast milk is very sweet so not great for teeth. Dental health lady did talk to our bf group and said that it would damage teeth. DD now has 8 teeth at 10.5 months and tbh I don't brush her teeth after her last feed becaus she also falls asleep - but I know I should

There is a range of views about breastfeeding and dental care in babies/toddlers. This link gives a reasonable overview of the research.

la leche league link

I think that the most convincing thing to me is that human babies didn't start getting cavities until we changed our diets and started farming, about 8000 years ago. And there wasn't any option but breastfeeding at the time. I suspect my 12mo DS is far more at risk from the other sugars in other foods than he is from breastmilk.

Back in the here and now... DS 'brushes' his own teeth with a smear of toothpaste and a little toothbrush while I'm changing his nappy just before his last feed (it also keeps his hands out of his nappy - bungo!).