 Hello everybody, Andrea Turewski here. So I have been a dental professional for about 17, almost 18 years. And you might wondering what exactly do I look at when I see a baby or a toddler even for their first dental visit? Often parents wonder, well, you can't really clean the teeth, you can't really do much, so what's the point? So as dental professionals, we look at so many things that can really help your child eat properly, sleep properly. So it's not just about the teeth all of the time. We are looking inside the mouth, we are looking at the lips, the tongue. We're asking you questions such as, does your child sleep through the night? Is your baby eating properly? Do they not like to eat? Are they giving you some troubles with that? Are they having trouble sleeping? It's actually not normal for a baby, as an example, to not wanna eat, to not wanna sleep, maybe they're having trouble eating. It could be because they have a tongue tie. It could be because they can't breathe properly and you need to sort of help them do exercises. Yes, you can help your baby do exercises to breathe properly. If they're breathing properly, they're now eating properly, they're now sleeping properly. Mom and dads are much happier. So it is such a good idea to have your first dental visit as a baby or a toddler. I tell parents at the very least age two, but I prefer to see even babies when they're born. Maybe not that soon, that might not be absolutely necessary, but it can't hurt. What I tell my patients is, if I'm coming to their house anyway, because I'm a mobile dental hygienist and I'm there to see the family, they just had a baby a couple of months ago, well, why don't I have a look at the baby too? I look at the lip, tongue inside the mouth. They probably don't have any teeth yet, although some babies are born with a tooth. Even if there's no teeth yet, I look at all of that. So I'm just gonna share my screen for a moment and give you guys some examples, just so you can kind of see what I'm talking about here. So can everybody see my screen? Okay, so basically you guys, so in a baby, here is a great example. Is your baby sleeping with their mouth? Open, that is not necessarily a good thing. If they're sleeping with their mouth open, what does that tell you? They aren't able to breathe properly. We need to help to promote breathing through the nose that will help their mouth, their teeth, their entire face sort of align properly and grow properly. In some cases, you can avoid orthodontics if things are done sooner rather than later. So I could be saving you guys $8,000 when your child becomes 13 and might need orthodontics. A lot of these problems can be corrected. In children, even in a baby, I look for tongue ties, okay? So if the baby or child can't really extend their tongue, so they're like trying to stick out their tongue as in this first picture, but they really can't, that can give them problems with eating. That can give them problems because they probably can't breathe through their nose properly because when their mouth is actually closed, they can't move their tongue. If they can't move their tongue to the roof of their mouth, they're having trouble breathing through their nose. So the tongue tie, we might have to kind of snip that for them so that way the tongue has movement which promotes proper breathing. We also look for this lip tie, see that? So this is actually creating a space in between those two teeth. If there's a space there, the teeth aren't able to come in properly, either the primary teeth or the permanent teeth. If the teeth are having trouble coming in, they might come in too slow, they might come in too fast. Things are kind of shifting everywhere and then before you know it, parents are asking me, does my child need braces? Cause teeth are coming in all over the place. We can actually stop all of those problems from happening if they're caught early enough. Last but not least, we look for cavities. So in this picture here, I look for black spots, brown spots. Yes, if your child is one years old, two years old, they can get cavities. So I look for that. If we catch cavities in the early stages, they can be treated sometimes with a simple liquid that can actually kill the cavity and stop it from getting worse. But that liquid only works with tiny cavities. I talk about that more you guys and several other videos that I have, but feel free to ask me if you have any questions. So all of these problems we like to look for in children. So please do not hesitate to reach out. I would love to come see your toddler, your newborn, your child for their first dental hygiene appointment. I look for all of these things and I let you know if we need to change certain things to really help them eat, able to breathe through their nose, able to prevent cavities, the list goes on. So thank you guys for watching. Please let me know if any questions and I will talk to you guys very soon.