Why You Should Visit Your Middletown Dentist While Pregnant

During pregnancy, your Middletown dentist can help to keep you in good oral health. Good dental care is important for everyone but especially for pregnant women.  Studies have found that when a pregnant mom has healthy teeth and gums her child will have better oral health throughout their lifetime.  This makes good preventative care extremely important and as a mom, gives you the ability to directly impact the health of your unborn child. When a child is growing it is extremely important to increase your calcium intake.  Their bones and teeth require around 250mg of calcium per day in order to grow healthy and strong.  By drinking more milk, eating cheese and yogurt you can get much of the calcium you need.  Otherwise, try a calcium supplement. If you don’t increase your intake of calcium, your body will start to take calcium from your own bones and teeth in order to give it to the baby. This is nature’s way of protecting your child, but will create health issues for you later on.  Your teeth and bones can become brittle which makes it easier for them to become damaged or broken during a simple accident.  This can also lead to osteoporosis. In addition to eating a well-balanced diet, we recommend that our pregnant patients increase their oral hygiene routine at home.  Rather than brushing twice a day, we suggest brushing after every meal using a soft toothbrush. This will keep bacteria off of the teeth and gums, which decreases a patient’s risk of cavities.  Flossing daily is also an important preventative measure.  An antiseptic mouthwash can also be used to kill any lingering bacteria.  When this at home routine is combined with trips to the dentist, you will significantly decrease the risk of developing any type of oral health issues during pregnancy. It is important to visit the dentist twice while pregnant.  This allows us to remove the bacteria and plaque that are on your teeth and gums.  Brushing alone is often not enough to get rid of all of the bacteria that forms in your mouth.  No matter how hard you try, some places are simply too hard to reach.  Our staff is extremely gentle and will complete these cleanings with expert care. These regular appointments also give us the ability to look for cavities.  If we find one, it can be treated right away before it causes a toothache or spreads. Pregnant women have sensitive teeth, so early detection is important to preventing pain. We can easily treat a small cavity without causing any discomfort where if an infection is allowed to spread, it will create pain all on its own.  Treatment is an important and easy step to stay healthy. Additionally, we will clean on and around the gum line to remove bacteria. Pregnant women often suffer from swollen and poofy gums which can be further irritated by bacteria.  Regular dentist appointments help our pregnant patients to stay comfortable throughout their pregnancy.