Bad Breath

I’ve been trying all means and ways to try cleaning Declan’s teeth and tongue. He hates it when I try to push a hanky wrapped finger into his mouth. He’ll twist and turn around and try to wriggle his way out of my grasp whenever I try to clean them for him…

I’ve been telling mil for the longest time that she needed to clean Declan’s mouth everyday but she kept telling me that it is not necessary. Her reason was because all the babies whom she took care of last time didn’t need to go through that routine, so, she conveniently think that mine need not go through mouth cleaning too. Arghhhhhh!!!

To me this is basic hygiene… and it’s always good to start babies on good habits early… It’s never too early to instill good habits right?? To mil, her little grandson is forever too young for all sorts of thing. At 13 months, she still insists that he is too young to be disciplined…..

Of late, Declan has been waking up with pretty bad breathe… and when I brought up the cleaning issue again, mil say, his breathe smells bad because I fed him cod liver oil… The truth is, he has been smelling bad before I fed him cod liver oil.. and I’ve just started feeding him the oil few days ago… and so far he has only taken it twice and each time half a table spoon…. Again, she insists that it is not necessary for me to clean his teeth and tongue… YUCKS! Declan ain’t cooperating with me either….. he prefers to go along with his grandma.

As usual, I refuse to give up. I tell myself I must teach Declan to take care of his dental health as soon as possible. While roaming in kiddy palace this afternoon, I come across a set of pigeon baby toothbrush.



Heheheh.. it consisted of 3 different types of toothbrushes suitable for different stages (differentiated by the number of teeth a baby had). It seems like something which Declan will not hesitate to shove into his mouth. I bought it.





See? I was right! The moment I gave it to him, he pushes it right into his mouth and started chewing on it. It’s a good start. I want him to get associated with the little toothbrush. While he chews, I demonstrated the action of tooth brushing to him and tell him :”Yes baby, brush teeth, brush brush.” He also tried pushing the toothbrush around in his mouth. The good thing about this set of toothbrush is, it comes with a stopper ring to be fixed on the brush to prevent choking.

I let him play with the brush for awhile then I take it away and keep it. This is to prevent him from loosing interest on that little sacred brush. I’ll give it to him every morning when he wakes up and go through the tooth brushing routine with him. Let’s hope he’ll get the idea soon and will allow me to clean his teeth for him.

GO AWAY BAD BREATH!