To the teeth

Watching the MTV Movie Awards being awarded, where vampires and werewolves sank their teeth in a fair lot of the awards, I thought of a nice blog entry: breastfeeding a teething child. Some mothers do refer to this episode like nursing a little vampire. (Which I personally like more as a metaphor than Dutch comedian Claudia’s garlic press, but then again, I don’t like garlic presses, but I do like vampire stories.) That feeling is said to really suck (pun, well, intended actually). A search for scientific references about this phenomenon left me with hardly anything. A Google Scholar search for breastfeeding and teeth gives thousands of hits in the realm of oral development and tooth health in relation to infant feeding (see previous newsflashes), but none about the problems and solutions for breastfeeding a teething child. Multiple mentions are to be found about teething problem symptoms and cures and ways to handle it. For the most nursing a teething is child is like hedgehog’s lovemaking: do it very carefully, because is pricks!