don't kiss your baby On The Mouth!

I have a confession to make. I am a potty mouth. Yep, yes I am. I rotted Garren’s teeth out when he was a baby. At 16 months old he had to be put under general anesthesia and have fillings put in his four top teeth.

Why?

Because I got the brilliant idea to clean his pacifier with my own mouth a couple times when he was a baby. I am not a koolaid mom I swear! This child was nursed and had NO sugar or sweets of any kind. Didn’t matter. The bacteria was in his mouth waiting for his little teeth to show up.

You can say, well on occasion I’ve put the handle of the pacifier in my mouth, but never the nipple, doesn’t matter. Little babies LOVE to grab at that pacifier handle and then stick their fingers in their mouths. I’ve also taken a bit of their food with their spoon to encourage them to eat. DUMB! DUMB! DUMB!

Why didn’t anyone tell me this? I realize you shouldn’t kiss all over baby when you’re sick because you don’t want to give them a cold, but no one told me about this bacteria called strep mutans. I wasn’t sick. I didn’t have anything to worry about. UGH! So wrong.

One of his teeth wound up getting an abscess when he was two and had to be removed. For those of you who’ve had children have medical procedures, you know how horrible it is when they administer that medicine that makes your child’s eyes roll back in his head and knock him unconscious. It’s awful. This all could have been prevented with a little knowledge.

I was even a dental assistant and didn’t have this kind of information. In fact, a lot of dentists don’t even realize this. I remember the reproving looks I got from the dentists who were oh, so, certain I was giving my child Coca Cola in his bottle. I finally found out what was wrong when we moved to Jacksonville and got my child a pedi dentist who had a state of the art facility and was current with his dental knowledge.

I suppose the snotty attitude I got from the dentists was karma. I remember being smug knowing I would do a better job with my child, even though I had no children yet, as I saw my nephew’s front teeth rot out. I had no proof that she fed her child unhealthy foods, but she must have right? Or was she just not brushing his teeth? What a jerk I was. In hindsight I remember she fed her child extremely healthy foods, better than I do my own kids now. I also remember watching her chew her food for her baby and giving it to him. Before you get all grossed out, she’s from another country and their ideas on things might be different than ours. That was most likely where his dental problems came from. Her mouth, her bacteria.

Now granted, this doesn’t happen to everyone, I’m just lucky. We don’t have this bacteria when we’re born. I’m pretty sure I got it making out with Bobby in between classes my freshman year. Even though it doesn’t happen to everyone, I still don’t understand why they don’t tell you this at the hospital with all that other crap they tell you after you have a baby. It’s such a simple, preventable thing. Now whenever I see a mom kiss their baby on the mouth, I cringe. That’s a shame.

Here’s a little article about it for further clarification.

http://parenting.ivillage.com/baby/bhealth/0,,46v9,00.html

Don’t kiss your baby on the mouth, don’t put anything in your mouth that will come in contact with your child’s mouth or hands. Don’t do what I did. Eat those cheeks up, but stay away from the lips, the pacifier and spoons. Chewing gum with xylitol greatly reduces or eliminates this particular bacteria in moms’ mouths.