Giving baby water and cleaning tongue

[natividad]

Do you give your babies water? Even though I was told by my ped that it was not necessary, my mother and her friends believe a baby should be given water. I am BF Alexander exclusively, by the way.

I was also told that cleaning a baby's tongue of milk residue is a good idea. I was told to wrap my index finger with a washcloth and "scrape" the tongue. Is this necessary? TIA

Naty
Mommy to Alexander 2/26/03

[mam615]

Hi,
My MIL and father also think the baby should be drinking water, but ped says it's only necessary if she's very hot or sweating, so I rarely give it to her. I, too, am exclusively BFing, and she's never quite taken to the bottle, so giving her water is a little hard. I've recently started giving her a little water in a sippy cup, and ice cubes (on one of those glorious HOT days we finally had in NJ last week!) in a mesh feeding bag, but that's about it.

As for the tongue cleaning -- never heard of it; probably couldn't hurt though. I do think wiping off the teeth (when they appear) is a good idea after meals.

[C99]

Naty,

I have read that "bottle mouth" can be bad for baby's teeth, so I could see maybe cleaning out his mouth when he has teeth. But at Alexander's age, I wouldn't bother.

[August Mom]

My grandmother kept insisting that DS needed water as well. Anyway, breastfed babies do not need water, especially at Alexander's age. At 6 months, my ped indicated that DS should get flouride supplements unless he consumed at least 8 oz. of water per day. I believe that parents generally begin introducing water when or after solids are introduced.

As far as scraping baby's tongue, it probably wouldn't hurt. My dental hygienist suggested wiping DS's gums with a damp washcloth. You could do the tongue too.

[sparkeze]

Breastmilk has tons of water in it. Definitely not necessary. Actually if you give your baby water (at his age) he might be too full to drink all the nutritious BM he needs!

And the tongue cleaning thing - I've never heard of it either. There still seems to be some controversy over whether BM is bad for teeth but from what I've read it seems that BM alone does not harm teeth. Since your baby is exclusively BF it's probably not necessary to do any type of cleaning, even on the gums. Wiping off the gums is mostly done so that the baby will be used to it by the time he either starts solids or gets teeth. If you want to clean your baby's mouth the only time you need to do it is at night after his last nursing. But if your baby falls asleep nursing I don't know if you want to wake him up to clean his mouth out.

[AngelaS]

Sounds like my mil! We just say, over and over, 'our ped recommends against it. She's getting all she needs thru the breastmilk'. :)

And no, I don't wipe my dd's gums or tongue. Once they get teeth, then we brush, but nothing until then.