Beyond the act of cleaning the infant’s gums, mothers can give better oral care for their child by breastfeeding instead of bottle feeding them, for there exist a potential problem which we call "Baby-Bottle-Tooth Decay" or BBTD among infants who are fed using feeding bottles. Others call this health problem Nursing Bottle Caries, Nursing Caries, Infant Caries etc.

Infants who are left to sleep with their feeding bottles in their mouth are highly at risk from this oral problem. This is a very devastating type of tooth decay for infants, their parents and their dentist. BBTD persists as a decay pattern and requires special attention. Overall water fluoridation and other methods of fluoride applications will have to be employed.

Baby Bottle Tooth Decay (BBTD) is caused by prolonged contact with almost any liquid other than water. This can happen from putting infants to bed with a bottle of formula, when the mothers (or caregivers) need to be away from them

When liquid from a baby bottle builds up in the mouth, the natural or added sugars found in the liquid are changed to acid by germs in the mouth. This acid then starts to dissolve the teeth (mainly the upper front teeth), causing them to decay. Baby Bottle Tooth Decay can lead to severe damage to your child’s baby teeth and can also cause dental problems that affect her permanent teeth.

One simple way to prevent Baby-Bottle Tooth Decay is to breastfeed than use baby bottles for infant feeding. With breastfeeding, with mother can keep watch that her baby’s mouth is not soaked with milk which may pool around the teeth for hours and that which eventually cause tooth demineralization and caries progression.

However, breastfeeding at night as the mother goes to sleep may also be risk a factor for nursing caries, and thus we encourage that mothers should still be awake during nocturnal feeding and still clean the baby’s mouth after each feed.

Nursing mothers may think that such suggestion is absurd and very exhaustive to practice, for some believe that among the comforts that breastfeeding gives is to be able to sleep while you feed your children. No one can contest that, but nothing is without its own discomfort in this world.

From a nutritionist’s point of view, mothers should simply perk up their energies to be able to perform all the nursing routines demanded by child rearing. One way to get that needed (extra) energy is to have an adequate diet that contains a good balance of macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein and fats) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals).

Breastfeeding mothers should seek consult of their nutritionist for their daily caloric needs and discuss how such needs may be achieved in their daily meals. It would always be easy to create a "raw" balanced diet, but when preparation and cooking methods have been applied, many nutrients are oftentimes lost; and thus, the balanced "raw" diet may already be deficient even before the nursing-mothers consume it.

To create sufficiency of nutrients in a nursing-mother’s diet, milk supplementation is a highly recommended way to meet her needs. In the market, not all milk formula were designed to adequately meet the nursing-mothers’ Recommended Daily Allowances for both macro and micronutrients. Try Anmum Lacta; it gives 320 kcal in two servings; it contains 30 percent of the mother’s daily protein requirement in two glasses. Anmum Lacta provides essential fatty acids and 700 ug folate in two servings, and it is no doubt a good source of calcium and iodine.

Having regular intake of your milk supplements will surely give you, nursing mothers, the added energy to stay awake at night as you breastfeed your child and protect her from the devastating problem of baby-bottle-tooth decay.