As a parent you want to do whatever is right to keep your baby healthy.

You can feel so guilty to see brown spots or cavities developing on your baby’s teeth.

Yet, discoloration and dental decay can start very young, sometimes within hours of a new tooth erupting!

Breastfeeding does not cause tooth decay

It doesn’t help when some dentists perpetuate the myth that breastfeeding, particularly night feeding, causes cavities.

This is simply not true. Breastmilk actually protects tooth enamel from decay becasue it stops acid and bacterial development in the mouth. It is actually the best thing you can do to keep your baby’s teeth strong and healthy. Even babies born with a genetic predisposition to weak teeth (such as dentinogenesis imperfecti (DI)) can keep their teeth intact with extended breastfeeding. 

As long as there is no food stuck on baby’s teeth, breastmilk is a remineralizing substance (especially if the mother is eating a teeth nourishing diet). Make sure all solid food has been cleaned off baby’s teeth to ensure that breastmilk does only good, and no harm. 

Baby teeth care starts before birth

So if it’s not breastmilk causing cavities, what is?

Toothbuds start to form in the womb, and epi-genetics is a major influence, where the genes that grow healthy teeth are switched on or off by environmental factors such as diet.

The best way to ensure the health of your baby’s teeth and your own, is for you to eat a teeth nourishing diet from conception, through pregnancy and breastfeeding.

A tooth nourishing diet includes a lot more minerals than almost any other way of eating, as well as fat-soluable vitamins that are most easily accessed from high quality animal products.

Younger siblings can be more vulnerable when the mother’s own mineral store has been drawn down during the pregnancy and breastfeeding of older children.

It’s not unusual for women who thrived on a plant-based diet before motherhood, to find that their prefered diet is unable to meet the phsyical demands of growing new humans.

The hard truth is that some (not all) babies simply aren’t able to grow healthy teeth without the specific nutrients only available from animal products.

Starting with teeth nourishing foods

As your baby starts to eat solid food, be sure that they are not eating processed foods. Crackers, rusks, fruit juice and fruit leather and sweetened yoghurt are some of the popular ‘healthy’ processed foods that actually can contribute to tooth decay in babies.

Teeth nourishing foods for babies and toddlers include hard cheese, plain unsweetened yogurt, cooked or raw fruit and vegetables. Learn more about the teeth healing foods in my free e-guide Feed Your Teeth.

Why do baby teeth rot on a good diet?

It’s not all about diet though.  Many babies and children who are conceived, gestated, breastfed and weaned on impeccably healthy diets, with vigilant oral hygiene, nonetheless have bad decay and other problems.

What’s going on when food is not the problem?

In these cases, where poor nutrition can’t be blamed, it’s worth looking at other possible influences such as:

• Exposure to drugs such as antibiotics in utero or infancy
• Gut problems and other illnesses that prevent baby or mother from utilizing teeth healing nutrients in a healthy diet
• Tongue or lip ties
• Environmental exposure to toxins that block teeth-nourishing nutrients
• Emotional stress experienced by baby or mother in utero or infancy that inhibit the body’s natural teeth building processes
• Genetic predisposition to weak teeth, where it runs in the family and may be related to ancestral experiences of famine or other trauma, possibly many generations ago
• Past life trauma embodied in the baby teeth may be the missing link to make sense of your baby’s teeth problems when nothing else does.

Baby teeth trauma may not be their own

The current generation of children born since 2010 seem to be particularly vulnerable to embodying ancestral or past life traumas in their baby teeth. This may be partly because of the cumulative effect of multiple generations that have been malnourished and traumatised.

Many people believe that children today are more likely to be very sensitive to energy and spirit, than was usual in previous generations.  It seems as if these sensitive children (aka Indigo, Crystal or New Earth children) are embodying cummulative, collective, traumas of past generations in their teeth so that these hurts can be recognised, cleared and released. 

Parents who are open to this perspective can support their children to clear and release the trauma while still very young. Addressing these inherited traumas may help adult teeth to come through without problems and the child can manifest her soul purpose with her full potential for emotional and spiritual intelligence.

If this interpretation resonates for you there are a number of ways you can support your baby to clear and release teeth traumas that are not their own. Methods range from kinesiology to imaginative play and are most effective when teeth healing nutrients are central to your baby’s diet.

Learn more about how holistic oral health coaching can help halt baby teeth decaying and support the development of healthy adult teeth.