Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

Please or to access all these features

Parenting

For free parenting resources please check out the Early Years Alliance's Family Corner.

Dropping milk feed/babies' teeth

2 replies

likeacrow · 17/07/2018 12:20

If you give your DCs milk directly before bed, what do you do about cleaning teeth? We used to give 15 month old DD a bottle of cow's milk just before bed but have stopped in literally the past couple of days after I posted a thread about this topic and got lots of advice saying you must clean their teeth afterwards otherwise the natural sugars from the milk (whether it's cow's/formula/breast) stays on their teeth all night otherwise and can damage teeth. This applies whether the milk is taken from a bottle/cup/breast apparently.

It doesn't work to give DD a bottle before cleaning teeth as she associates it with falling asleep (she can go to sleep without it, but if we gave her it in the evening she'd start falling asleep, if that makes sense), so we're just trying to give her more yoghurt/milk in food/cheese throughout the day to make up for the good 7oz she was getting at bedtime and now isn't. She's not interested in drinking 'straight' milk from a cup.

So, do I just not worry and hope she's getting enough milk from the other sources mentioned or do I go back to giving her milk at night and not worry about her teeth?

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
mindutopia · 17/07/2018 12:43

My understanding really is that it’s about the constant sucking on bottle or breast all night that causes tooth decay. One feed before bed shouldn’t be an issue assuming you’re not offering loads of juice, sweets, acidic foods during the day.

My dd had a cup of milk before bed until she was 4.5. We never brushed her teeth after and they are perfect, not even the faintest sign of decay. I have a friend who breast fed her dd throughout the night (constantly on the breast all night while sleeping) until she was 2 and ended up with lots of tooth decay. If it’s just for 10 minutes and then done, our bodies are pretty good at not going crazy and damaging our teeth. So I wouldn’t necessarily bother brushing after milk if it’s not working, just don’t leave the bottle in bed with her all night.

nowifi · 17/07/2018 14:58

My DD 2 still has milk before bed and sometimes in the night too, agree she just downs it so it doesn't hang around on her teeth for long either!

New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread