Caring for Baby Gums

Video Transcript

"So we've talked a lot about teething now I wanted to talk to you a little about caring for your baby's gums and teeth. You really need to start caring for your baby's gum even before their first teeth emerge. So what you want to do is a daily wipe of their gums to get rid of any bacterial that might be on it and a great thing to use is either just a small gauze pad that you just put your finger in and you're just going to use water. You don't want to use toothpaste with babies because they don't know how to spit it out yet and you don't want them swallowing that fluoride. So you're just going to get that gauze pad or you can use a wash cloth, wet and you're just going to come in their mouth. So you're just going take the wet gauze and rub it all around the baby's gum. The top's of the gum, the sides, the bottom, the inside, the outside and just give it a good cleaning and you can do this once daily and they?re going to chew on you probably when you do this. The other thing you can us and once the first tooth has appeared is use a little finger toothbrush and again you're just going to use this with water, no toothpaste yet. So you're just going to, they're great, because one side has bristles to kind of brush, massage them, they have little nubs on the other side to massage the gums and babies really like this because it feels really good. So again, no toothpaste. You're just going to dip it water or run it under the sink and then you're going to put it in the baby's mouth and this little guy has a tiny mouth so it's not going to fit but you're just going to rub back and forth over that little first two or four teeth in the front and you then you can use the massager in the back and they really like this because it feels really good in their mouth. You just turn it around and you can massage the backs of their gums with the massaging part. Another great thing for teething babies, and I really, these are a little teeth cleaning kit and I really love these because it has just about everything you're going to need and this is a gum massage and it's really great for little babies as they're starting to teeth, because as they get old enough they can hold it on themselves and then they put it in their mouths and they massages their gums and they teeth on it and they really like this too. In caring for your baby's gum you want to wipe them off once a day. Use the little finger toothbrush and then one of the things that you really want to do to prevent tooth decay is to never put your baby to sleep with a bottle either milk or juice in their bed because it pools up in their mouth and the sugar collects on their teeth and it helps to speed up any kind of tooth decay that might happen."