Caitlin's baby bottle caries?

I'm wondering whether Caitlin has baby bottle caries? After discovering a brown spot on her front teeth (and even before), I've been very diligently brushing her teeth. As soon as she know how to spit out water after rinsing her mouth, I am using a fluoride toothpaste on her twice a day. I have high hopes that her condition will get better and the problematic areas will remineralise. But I was wrong! She had a few more cavities lately! I noticed brown spots on the two upper molars (she only has two upper molars now), and a very obvious cavity on one of the front teeth, and both lateral incisors have one brown spot in front and one brown spot behind and a developing small spot in front! A total of 5 teeth affected! All the brown spots are on the upper set of teeth and her lower set of teeth are cavity free and gleaming white. I read online that THIS means it is baby bottle caries or early childhood caries. But you know what is most ironic about it? She does NOT take a bottle at all! Caitlin is a TBF baby, a TOTAL BREASTFED BABY! So how did this baby bottle caries come about?!

I'm so perplexed. I have read many articles that said nursing baby to sleep is not linked to childhood teeth decay. And yet my breastfed baby has baby bottle caries. I must also say that she probably has the bacteria from her older brother who had cavities treated earlier on. But I thought breastmilk is supposed to have anti-bacteria property? This is worrying me to death and I do not want my daughter to have decayed teeth that will cause her pain and embarrassment later in her childhood. I definitely want to help her remedy the situation NOW. But the problem is how? Must I really quit the night nursing? Nursing to sleep is a die-hard habit for her. I tried to get her to sleep without nursing and she cried her heads off. She's a very headstrong girl. She usually needs to feed once or twice in the middle of the night too. After yesterday's failure, hubby and I thought we'll just continue to nurse her and we'll see the dentist on Tuesday to see what we can do for her. Today, I tried something else. I have got this baby toothpaste that has Xylitol (bacteria fighting sugar found in some toothpaste) that is safe to swallow. So after she fell into deep sleep, I put a smear of the toothpaste on her toothbrush and brushed her teeth. She sucked a bit and then went back to sleep. I dunno if this works in the long term. If I have to wake up to brush her teeth every time after she wake up to nurse and then fall back to sleep, I will do it if it means my daughter's teeth will be protected. I can't reach all the teeth with this method but at least the front ones will be brushed.

Sigh. A mother has endless worries.

I feel so frustrated and beaten because I followed expert advices and did so much for my children, and yet problems cannot be avoided. I'm a really sad and worried mummy. As much as possible I would love to avoid the GA option. I can't bear to see my child go through the risk and the operation. Little Caitlin is not calm and composed like her brother. She screams her head off when we step into the doctor's office, before the doctor even touch her. At the dentist, I don't know what will happen.

Please God, please let my daughter be cooperative and please let her be well!

On the brighter side, Kieran's teeth have since been cavity-free and shining. I made sure I brush his teeth after breakfast, lunch and before sleep, and always floss them clean before bedtime.

iHerb shopping!

I just shopped on iHerb again! I recently added myself into an I love Daiso group on Facebook and some of the daiso fans there are really hard core! They can wipe out the egg timers in Daiso island wide, and went into Daiso with empty cart and came out with $200+ worth of items. 真是甘拜下風！I wonder whether there's an iHerb shopping group to add myself to on Facebook? I spend more on iHerb than on any brick and mortar store. Haha!

I found out that iHerb has a personalised page for shoppers! Check out my page here: http://www.iherb.com/me/ngsuqi

I love to shop for cruelty free and eco-friendly household items, shampoos, organic baby or children's snacks, health supplements and essential oils. It is thrilling to receive the items on my doorstep and open up the boxes to welcome my spoils. I use Singpost for the free shipping but the downside to this is if you are not at home when the delivery man comes, they will send the box to the nearest post office for you to collect. If my items are not too heavy, I'm fine with it since the nearest post office to me isn't very far away.

If you are a first time buyer on iHerb, use discount code RBZ415 to get $10 off your purchase!

Mothering

The thing about being a mother is that we are always worrying about our children. I have been telling myself to relax but I really can't. If my child shows a slight indiction that he may be developing a fever, I will panic, and if my child gets a tooth cavity, I will see it as an indication that I am a bad mother, that I haven't been taking good care of the children. Care for the children is never enough. There's always more to be done, more to do, more to perfect, and so on.

Top items in my worry list are now Caitlin's front teeth cavity and Kieran's phonics. I'm trying to see if I can help her teeth remineralise by giving her the appropriate vitamins and starting her on fluoride and xylitol brushing since she now can spit out after gargling. Caitlin is a stubborn and fiery little one. Getting her to accept me brushing her teeth is like fighting a battle with her. I have found a way to get her to cooperate a little bit more, which is to let her watch an iPhone app of a cute panda brushing his teeth and then gargling. I can set the brushing timer to as long as I like. She finds it interesting and often laughs at the silly panda, so I place the phone with the app running in front of the wash basin and coax her into brushing. If she struggles, then well, I have to keep brushing despite her cries. It's sad to see her struggling twice or thrice (sometimes I brush her teeth in the afternoons if we are not outside) everyday during toothbrushing but that is better then seeing more cavities on her teeth. She has about 5 small but noticeable ones on the front teeth. The back molars look alright and all of her lower set of teeth are nice. I don't know how the decay only happens on the front ones.

Kieran is now learning very fast and to help him absorb the good stuff, I'm reading a lot to him, teaching him to recognise simple Chinese words, and to learn to write simple letters and strokes. He's progressing at a snail speed but at least there's progress and he won't go to Kindergarten next year not knowing anything. I'm also teaching him phonics myself using this teaching tool: The ordinary parent's guide to teaching reading. There's an audio companion which I borrowed from the library. While teaching, I also learn valuable lessons on phonics. I'm convinced that phonics help young children read better, and he has to read, otherwise he can't even understand math problems at Primary One. If he don't finish learning phonics by K1, he will confuse it with Han Yu Pin Yin that he will learn in K2.

So being a mother, we have no time to relax. My favourite way to "relax" is sipping hot, bitter-sweet black tea in a cooling air conditioned room, away from the suffocating heat in the rest of the house, and temporarily away from that forever "Mama! Mama!". Sweet black tea works wonder for my soul. 苦中作樂，因為人生就是甜中帶苦，苦中帶甜。