How you may be harming your baby with night-time feeds

Water is the only safe drink for babies at night and parents should never leave a milk-filled bottle with their child in the cot, a paediatric dental surgeon at Crumlin children’s hospital has warned.

Parents who are reluctant to discontinue night-time milk feeds should be shown photographs of decaying teeth as a “useful visual aid” to discourage the practice, suggests Dr Kirsten FitzGerald, consultant paediatric dental surgeon at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin. “Babies should be fed and put to bed, not put to bed and then fed,” she says.

Writing in the Journal of the Irish Dental Association, Dr FitzGerald says soothers should not be used after 18 months, and only orthodontic soothers should be given to a baby before that age. Some “well-meaning but poorly informed” parents use fluoridated toothpaste earlier than the recommended age of two years, before the child’s tooth enamel is mature, she adds.

Nationwide dental checks for children in their first year of life urgently need to be introduced in order to reduce tooth decay and extractions as they grow up, according to two studies published in the journal.

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The HSE should introduce a “first tooth, first visit” model of care in order to ensure “zero cavities” in later childhood, researchers say.

Citing international evidence, the studies claims parents could save up to €300 a year overall by ensuring their children is seen at the age of one, compared to a first visit at four or five years.

Decayed teeth

Half of Irish five-year-olds have decayed teeth, while about 10,000 general anaesthetic procedures are carried out each year on under-16s, most of them tooth extractions.

The HSE has a statutory requirement to provide dental services to pre-school children and those at primary school, but the resources to fund these services varies hugely in different areas. Most children are not screened until they are six to eight years old at the earliest.

Introduction of a first dental visit by 12 months of age should be firmly on the health agenda in Ireland, according to the studies.

“Our goal is to see the development of an evidence-based model of preventive dental care for children within the HSE service, as part of general child health services,” Dr FitzGerald says.

“From a financial perspective, preventive care is overwhelmingly cheaper than treatment of disease, and when you look at quality of life, the benefits are enormous. Children with decayed teeth have trouble eating, sleeping, learning at school and their normal growth is affected.”

The health of Irish children’s teeth has improved considerably since the 1960s, with a 75 per cent reduction in the average number of decayed, missing or filled teeth among both young children and teenagers.