Pediatric Dentists are Weaners part 2

So we decided, based on the information we were given, to go ahead and have Kathleen's teeth "fixed" at Children's Hospital by the second pediatric dentist we had seen. She had convinced us that seven of our baby's teeth were desperately in need of crowns and that it was something vitally important to her health. Everyone we know wondered about the need to do something so drastic to baby teeth that were going to fall out anyway, but the dentist said that it would effect her permanent teeth and possibly harm her overall health.

When I began to experience pain in my nipples when Kathleen nursed because of my pregnancy, I weaned her. Was it because of the pain? No, it was because the dentists had managed to plant a seed of doubt about breastfeeding's connection to our teeth problems. I used the pain as an excuse. Kathleen weaned without a tear or fuss, which is what allowed me to ignore the nagging feeling that I was making a mistake. Had she begged to continue breastfeeding, I would have given in.

The emotional turmoil was the worst, but second place in our suffering was the cost of this torture. We have medical insurance, but not dental. The treatment ended up costing us close to $3,000 at a time when we were paying cash for my pregnancy (our medical insurance covers everything except for teeth and maternity).

We went ahead and made the appointment at the hospital. A week later, the secretary from the first dentist's office called to tell us that our appointment at Childrens was all set. I told her that we hadn't asked them to do that, or agreed to use their office. We couldn't believe the nerve of those people. Our last words to them were that we'd get back to them! It ended up causing us trouble because they had already gotten things preapproved with our insurance company (they paid for the hospital and anesthesia) for their date, and it was a lot of work to switch it to the actual date of the procedure.

I don't even like to think about the day Kathleen had her teeth destroyed. I remember the tiny hospital gown, handing my little baby to a nurse at the door of the OR, and her pitiful cry of, "Daddy," when we went in to see her in the recovery room. We went home after a couple of hours, and Kathleen was her usual sunny self by the next day.

At her next check-up (she was two by then), I pointed out to the dentist that there was a circle on Kathleen's canine. She said we would just have to watch it. We had always tried to brush Kathleen's teeth twice a day, but after this experience, I became a fanatic. Once her baby brother came along and got his own teeth (at eleven months), I included him in Mission Clean Teeth. If the kids fell asleep in the car on the way home from somewhere in the evening, I brushed their teeth while they lay sleeping in bed. I read up endlessly on food and drinks to determine what was safest. I discovered that black tea (hot or cold) protected teeth against cavities and that chocolate was the best candy because it didn't stick to the teeth.

In my research, I began to find article after article about breastmilk and teeth. It turned out that dentists were completely ignorant about the difference between a baby lying in bed at night sucking on a bottle of formula and a baby nursing to sleep at his mother's breast.

• The action of sucking milk from a breast is different than from a bottle because it takes effort. Part of that action includes a swallow, which prevents any milk from pooling in the mouth. I paid attention to my son's nursing after I read that, and sure enough, he swallowed. I would honestly lie there to make sure I heard one last swallow after he was finished nursing and already asleep. I heard it EVERY SINGLE TIME.


• Milk can continue to drip out of a bottle's nipple after the baby is asleep and not sucking anymore. This allows a constant trickle of formula onto their teeth at night if the bottle doesn't fall out of their mouth.


• Breastmilk and formula are not the same thing (like I didn't already know that).

According to one study, breastmilk has no more effect on teeth than pure water. Baby teeth were dipped in water, breastmilk, formula, and cow's milk. The ones in water and breastmilk showed no problems, while the other two did. With further experimentation, they discovered that when there is other food material present on the teeth (especially sugars), breastmilk made the decay worse. What I took from that was the knowledge that I had to vigilant about cleaning my son's teeth before bed at night so that there was nothing left before he nursed to sleep.

Another article I read pointed out that if breastmilk and nursing to sleep past the age of one caused tooth decay, then it would show up in the fossil record. Cavities in baby teeth didn't show up until the industrialized age when people began eating more and more processed food and refined sugars.

We were careful with our son's teeth, and he showed no signs of having any decay. Things were going along great until I took him in for his first checkup at age two...