Any dentists around? Strange marks on baby's teeth

[Geordiebabe85]

11 mo has strange marks on his teeth. The photo is the best I can get from a grumpy baby!
It looks to me like tooth decay but I don't see how it can be! He doesn't eat much chocolate, no sweets, only drinks breast milk and water and we brush twice a day.
I'm struggling to get a proper dentist appointment for him.

My daughter had this on one of her back teeth, hyperplastic enamel. The dentist said it's not decay and isn't a problem, and it's better to get it in the milk teeth than the grown up teeth. But when I've just googled it it sounds quite serious!

Thank you. Did the dentist say to do anything?

V hard to tell from this pic. Can you get a better photo?
might be hypoplastic ( not properly formed) enamel ) but decay isn’t impossible either.

My son had what looked like a yellow /light brown pice of sweetcorn on his incisor as it came through, the dentist said it was just a very minor fault type thing on his enamel and not to worry and sure enough his adult teeth are fine!

Did you or he have intravenous antibiotics at some point during pregnancy or infancy?

DD1 had orbital cellulitis and needed clobbering with IV antibiotics. When her adult teeth came through they had discoloured patches. I don’t know whether baby teeth can be similarly affected.

Baby teeth are formed early on in pregnancy so taking antibiotics in infancy or late pregnancy will not affect them .
It's difficult to tell from photo as too indistinct.

could be decay or hypoplasia. Either way you have to be very careful with diet. If he eats anything with sugar more than three times a day he is likely to get decay . Even just a bite.
For a child this age fruit yoghurts , fruit smoothies/purées ,dried fruit like raisins, flapjacks etc ie things with hidden sugars are normally the problem.

Also my 3rd had chicken pox at 6 months which marked his baby teeth once they cane though. Permanent teeth were fine though.

My daughter had this in matching teeth (both top incisors). The dentist said they didn't have enamel on them. They were a yellow colour and slowly wore away without the protection of the enamel. She was given a lot of antibiotics as soon as she was born and apparently that can cause the teeth which are forming to malform. She said it wasn't a problem, just to try and keep them clean and from getting infected. They will eventually fall out and the teeth that grow in their place should be completely normal. My DD is 6 now and they're starting to wobble.

The baby teeth are already formed by 6 months , as are the front and first molar adult teeth.
So chicken pox will not have affected baby teeth.

Oh god I feel so guilty now. He LOVES yogurt and fruit. Maybe I haven't done enough tooth brushing.
He was really ill around 4 months and had IV antibiotics.

The enamel on the baby front teeth has fully formed by 4 months so the iv antibiotics will not have affected his teeth.

The main thing with decay , so long as you are brushing twice a day , is the amount of times a day something sugary is eaten or drunk. Even a sip or mouthful . Also having something sugary to eat or drink just before bed time is a problem , even if you brush afterwards , because the acid stays on the teeth overnight without enough saliva to neutralise it.

My ds has this it’s from antibiotics when I was pregnant with him and when he was a small baby - he was very prem. He had it on his milk teeth and has on his adult teeth too.

DS2 had discoloured milk teeth - no antibiotics, no decay, can't remember what the name was but the dentist said it was nothing we did. His adult teeth are white as normal

I don’t know what it is OP but I’m surprised you said “not much chocolate” - 11mo don’t need any!

Antibiotics will not have caused this , but being premature certainly will as the enamel of baby teeth and adult teeth is forming in the middle to end part of pregnancy .
Maternal illness during pregnancy and any severe illness in early childhood can affect the baby teeth and adult teeth respectively.
The only antibiotic that affects teeth is tetracycline which gives them a grey colour and for this reason is not used in very young children as it affects the adult teeth.

Oh this is really good to know! My DD had sepsis at 23hrs old and spent two weeks in NICU on antibiotics. I've been really worried about her teeth (adult in particular - baby ones seem to be coming through ok) but i know she didn't have tetracyline so fingers crossed all will be ok!

He's had maybe 6 chocolate buttons in his whole life.
Thank you for making me feel worse.

No-one needs chocolate…

I was 8 weeks early and very small for dates, and my teeth had yellow patches due to enamel hypoplasia. With careful brushing and not too much sugar, I only ended up with one cavity right before I lost that tooth. My permanent teeth came through strong and white.

My younger daughter also has this on her first permanent molars due to illness from 18 months to two years. They came through 4 years ago, she’s a good brusher, and no problems with them yet.

I’d don’t think Lollygaggle completely right about the antibiotics or neonatal illness. Tetracycline during pregnancy can cause enamel hypoplasia, and studies have shown that babies prescribed Amoxicillin are more likely to have fluorosis which causes staining and pitting of the enamel. And while enamel formation of the milk teeth begins in the first trimester, mineralisation is not completed until 3 months postnatal, though the incisors will be before this. The enamel mineralisation of the first adult premolars is not completed until the child is a toddler, hence my daughter’s illness causing her permanent first molars to be hypoplasic. My dentist child’s first molars are similarly affected after chronic ear infections in his early years.

Maternal diabetes, and smoking during pregnancy can also result in dental enamel hypoplasia.

Tetracycline causes grey staining , not hypoplasia https://www.ebmconsult.com/articles/tetracycline-stains-teeth-mechanism

fluorosis is a white stain on the teeth , it is not associated with any weakness of the enamel (except in countries eg in the Rift valley where there is excessively high fluoride in the water far in excess of U.K. water levels). Fluorosis is considered a cosmetic defect . Hypoplasia is a defect of tooth (normally enamel ) formation . It can vary in severity from a cosmetic problem to an oral health problem.

Any maternal illness can cause hypoplasia as can early childhood illness.

I've just reviewed the literature. There is a paper from 2005 suggesting there may be a link between fluorosis and amoxicillin but further research and literature reviews have failed to provide conclusive evidence and it is only a suggestion. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22966729/#:~:text=It%20has%20been%20speculated%20that,less%20frequently%20in%20the%20incisors.

However as said before unless you are in somewhere with a naturally very high fluoride content in the water fluorosis is a cosmetic problem of white spots only.