TEETH. Secret confession style.

Scarlett has had some teeth trouble.

It is all because *TMI warning* we nursed with a nipple shield (or NS as we call it in our household!) and it acted like a bottle nipple would have in that it caught the milk and let it slowly drip into Scarlett's mouth even after she fell asleep.  Blech!  It has been a nightmare for me because we all just take care of our teeth and have minimal cavities, if any at all, so this came as a shock.  To add to the shock, I was uneducated in anything to do with bottle-feeding, so I had no idea the milk was slowly rotting her teeth.  I didn't even know it was possible.  The nurses at the hospital never mentioned it to me, but who can really blame them; I was adamant that I would wean Scarlett from her NS asap.  Little did I know that she would have nothing to do with that!  They assumed that she'd just be nursed regularly, so her teeth were never a concern for them, I'm assuming.

Anyway, the reason I'm being open about this now is because a.) it feels good to get it off my chest, b.) we have another dentist appointment next week and I'm nervous as to what they'll say about her increasing decay, and c.) because The Poe Fam just had a post about going to the dentist, cavities, and sedation.  It really made me feel better.  I'm not alone.  Maybe this post will do that for someone else!

I'm not sure what the dentist will say about Scarlett's teeth when we go.  We have been using MI paste, but her enamel is still as good as gone on her two front teeth and the two teeth on the top, left side of her mouth.  I'm pretty confident that we'll have to have her teeth capped, but I'm not sure how old they'll want her to be.  That will involve hospital sedation.  Scary.

What a relief when this whole ordeal is all over!  On the bright side, at least these are her temporary teeth and you can't tell in pictures!!!

They're dancing!  Swearsies. 

Self-weaning?!

       Scarlett will be 15 months in two weeks.  We are still co-sleeping and breastfeeding.  She doesn't nurse to eat, she mostly just lets it soothe her to sleep.  We nurse once during the day and she falls right asleep for her nap.  (The upsides are that is she is my little baby again for that 1-2 block of time and she's on my lap, so it's impossible to clean!  Ahhh, hello blogger!)  And then we nurse periodically throughout the night when she wakes up; I use nursing to soothe her back to sleep quickly.  (she never took to a pacifier)  Once she hit one year old, I started to warm up to the idea of weaning, but I honestly just love nursing and never want it to end, however, I was beginning to get nervous that Scarlett would never self-wean.  On top of nursing and co-sleeping, during Scarlett's entire life, I've just been following her lead.  We never had a set schedule; so she would sleep or eat whenever she wanted/needed to.  This worked for us because we were lucky enough to have me stay home with her full-time.  (obviously, hence the name, "Staying Home with Scarlett.")  If I could know that Scarlett would wean at a certain age, I would not be worried at all, but weaning seems to be creeping into my thoughts and blogs that I've been reading a lot lately and Scarlett still seems content to nurse.  Baby-led weaning has been the way I had always envisioned the end to Scarlett nursing, but then I stumbled across this article and have been really considering it for our family.  I love that Dr. Gordon encourages a family bed and that his method is not about complete weaning, just nighttime weaning.  For the past three nights, I have been putting off trying to start the twn day process until there was a night where I wasn't too exhausted to have enough patience.  And then an amazing thing happened...Scarlett put herself to sleep!  Just like that.  We did our regular bedtime routine and I still nursed her, but she was restless and kept flipping herself onto her belly and make silly faces at me or singing until I joined in (I know it was counterproductive to join her singing and giggle at her silly faces, but she is just irresistable!).  The fourth time that she flipped herself over, she scooched right up, rested her head on my pillow, and just layed there snuggled up against me.  Eventually, I felt her heavy, rhythmic breathing and knew she had asleep.  Words cannot describe how happy I am!  Going forward, I'm going to continue to trust my instincts and trust that Scarlett will lead the way in what works for her! 
PS--Although, if she's still nursing and I'm STILL not sleeping through the night and it becomes an issue, I'm so using the nighttime weaning method...fingers crossed it doesn't get to that though...!

PPS--On an unrelated note, I gave Scarlett a cloth and told her to wash her face.  Instead, she opened up her mouth and started "brushing" her teeth.  We clearly still need to work on our body parts...!