Baby Toothbrushes - Review of Baby Buddy: Baby's 1st Toothbrush

My daughter cut her first tooth at eight weeks.  I couldn't believe it and I nearly cried. About two months later we were at the dentist's office for an appointment for my husband, and our dentist asked me if I had been brushing her teeth. She was exclusively breast-fed, and brushing her teeth hadn't even crossed my mind. He told me that I could rub them with a washcloth or get a soft toothbrush but that I should have started cleaning her teeth the day that her first tooth poked through her gums.

I was previously under the assumption that I should start brushing her teeth when she started eating "real" food. Looking back, I am not sure where this obscure belief came from. I guess I knew that drinking juice and coming in contact with many sugars would be bad for her teeth but I hadn't thought about breast milk.



NUK Infant tooth and gum cleanser

A few days later I remembered that we had received a baby toothbrush for our baby shower, and I dug it out of a box. It is a blue flexible thing that slips onto a parent's finger and it has a patch of gentle and stubby silicone bristles on the area that falls on the pad of the finger. It came in a package with some baby toothpaste, which we passed along to a friend who uses it. We decided to wait on toothpaste until she is at least ingesting other things. The finger toothbrush was a big hit with my daughter. She could have spent hours just gnawing on my finger. I put a little cold water on the brush to begin with and then rinsed with water after each use. My fingers are so narrow that the brush easily slipped off because it wasn't skin-tight. My husband didn't have that problem. The finger brush worked well for the first month or two, but as soon as her teeth were a little bigger, it began to hurt if she chomped down on my finger.



I started looking online for baby toothbrushes. I found an adorable baby toothbrush that is made completely of silicone and looks like a banana. It had awesome reviews and honestly, I was tempted to buy it just for the cute factor. However, once I saw the Baby Buddy: Baby's 1st Toothbrush, I knew that it was the more practical route for us. I ordered this toothbrush in November and put it in Astrid's stocking for Christmas. I can say for sure that it was a huge hit. She loved unwrapping presents and pulling things out of her stocking. In fact, she unwrapped many of her gifts while her toothbrush was hanging from of her mouth.

 

The toothbrush is entirely made of soft silicone and has a handle that is easy for little hands to grasp. The brush end is an arc-shape. The arc itself is like a sideways "H" and the interior edges are completely covered with silicone bristles. My sweet baby girl loves to bite on it, thus brushing her teeth and soothing her gums for teething. What a brilliant design!

My daughter "brushes" her teeth several times each day, and loves it! She always brushes with supervision, just in case. Being silicone, these toothbrushes do attract hair and dirt very easily, so we rinse with running water before and after each use and store it on the sideboard in the bathroom. These toothbrushes come in clear, pink, and blue. They sell for around $6-$7 on amazon.com, and I believe that they are worth every penny!

Now she has eight teeth!