4.5 yr.old son with alot of cavities...

[pattigirlny]

i posted in the dental room but no replies....my poor son has 9 cavities! i am heartbroken! i feel guilty for not being able to see them develop...and for having them develop in the first place. i used to let him brush but would always follow up with me or hub. the cavities are all in the back teeth, upper and lower and now i cringe at the thought of having them drill....and novacaine needles.... my poor baby! we go back next week for a cleaning..we go to a great pediatric dentist, and i am sure he has seen this before but i feel like i neglected my son's health by letting this happen. cavities cannot form overnight,but i wouldnt be able to tell what one looked like anyhow.i was just wondering if any of you had seen this or been thru this before...and if so, how do you treat this.....sweet air? general anethsia? ugh! i am so upset with myself! oh and by the way he breastfed til 3 yrs old.and we never gave him flouride vitamins or flouridated toothpaste, although now i am thinking of giving him very little flouride to maybe build up the strength of his permanent teeth...i also worry about my lil 17 mnth old daughter...when should i have her teeth checked out? thanks for any advice/encouragment.....patti

[Linda in Arizona]

When my younger DD was 2, she had 4 cavities. I took her to the dentist because I could see black spots on her teeth We were living out of the country at the time and having them done under a general was not an option, so they were done in the dentist office with a local. She didn't have to have a shot, though. There is a new thing that is like a wand that drips the anethsia to the area. It is much, much less painful. Part of the problem with the shot is that it puts so much stuff into the gum that cells rupture.

Anyway, she had the work done very slowly, a little at each visit over about 6 weeks. The dentist was super and really willing to work with her and treated her like a person with feelings.

My older DD (who was 4 at the time) also had 2 cavities. Filling them was quite easy. We started on my younger DD's first because they were so much worse, so by the time we did my older DD's she WANTED to have fillings.

Acording to our dentist (who really seemed to know her stuff) giving floride like a vitamin doesn't help teeth. It just gets ingested and ends up in their bones. In order for floride to help teeth, it needs to pass over the teeth. The best way to do this is by brushing often with a floride toothpaste and then spitting it out. We didn't use floride toothpaste before all this happened, now we do.

Once cavities have started in someone mouth they can easily spread to other teeth because it is a bateria. So once a kid has 1 cavity, they will just end up with more and more until they are all fixed.

[mother twilight]

I feel your pain and so does my son...

who had 9 cavities as well. It's good to know that you have a ped. dentist, b/c I think they are the best for dealing with young ones. My son, who is 4 1/2 now had 2 teeth pulled and went under general in the hospital to repair the rest. We tried the weekly visit route but when he ended up screaming his head off while they finished filling a tooth we couldn't take it anymore. We ended up putting him under for that reason and it worked out really well. He was up and running around by the evening of his surgery.

I'm sorry you feel guilty, we felt the same way, but there is nothing to be done except take good care of their teeth now. I found a great organic toothpaste called triple action, that has no flouride but cleans really well (we got complements last time he went for a cleaning). I used some Tom's of Maine's and then the Triple action and the difference was HUGE! I think some kids just are prone to cavities, though I do consider the possibility that it may have something to do with the environment b/c it certainly isn't nursing or eating healthy whole grain foods or just genes. But that's just a guess.

Good luck to you, and if you have any questions about what we did or just need to talk more about your feelings you can pm me.

Blessings,
Kelly

[merpk]

We have the same thing. DS#1(also 4.5yo) is in the midst of many, many appointments to get it taken care of. He's handling it like a champ ...

DS had nursing caries ... I know many folks say they're not real, but he nursed through the night for much of his first 3 years of life, always fell asleep nursing, and his front four top teeth were just visibly rotting.

And all of his back molars.

And one or two on the sides.

It's hard to always push him to brush, too, because he hates it. We've gotten him electric toothbrushes, tried different pastes, played games through it ... I think he's in pain from the teeth pretty regularly ( or was before the dental work began) so that made it harder, too.

We're lucky in that the dentist we're using is so sweet with him (at the NYU Dental School pediatric clinic) and so good with him that all this drilling and needles and stuff seems to hurt us watching more than it apparently hurts him.

Meanwhile DD also nurses to sleep every night and nurses pretty regularly, and her teeth are just so white ... no rotting at all.

DH has crappy teeth, I have all of mine and not too many cavities.

Some of it is genetic ...

Thanks for the Triple Action recommendation. We use Tom's, but I guess something better is called for ...

Good luck ...

- Amy