Flouride in Water

Your 4 month old should not be drinking straight water. If you’re using it to mix with formula, use tap water. It has fluoride in it, but not too much. Do NOT give “spring” water (eg bottles water) because it does not contain any fluoride. When my daughter turned 6 months, my pediatrician gave us vitamin drops, which contained fluoride.

my son is 5 months old. he is on WIC and when we were seen by a nutritionist, she asked my what type of water i feed him and i told her bottled. she said to feed him using tap water and just to boil it for about 5 min. she said flouride is good for babies. Now my sister tried out the nursery water when her daughter was about a month, and it made her throw up the formula, so she sticks with the tap water also. hope this helps:)

My pediatrician said that I should use tap water because the children need it. One is 2 and the other 9 months. We were using bottled water until she told us to swith.

Too much fluoride can cause digestive problems. Our pediatrician said we should give our son filtered tap water, because it is already fluoridated. If you only give your baby bottled water, it would be best to use the nursery water.

My suggestion would be to ask your pediatrician. Ask about any questions involving your baby whether is be health or otherwise related. I would hate to see you only get advise from someone who may be well-meaning, but not have all of the correct information.

Pubic tap water usually DOES already have fluoride in it. You will have to check with your water company as to your city as I do not know where you live, but I believe it is in Boynton water, already.

I can tell you what my pediatrician and dentist told me.

First of all, my baby did not have fluoride until she was 6 months old and it was in her vitamins, which were liquid, and prescribed by her Dr. Otherwise it was hard to figure out how much she consumed and yes, too much fluoride or too much anything is not good.

So I was not to give her fluorinated water of any kind because she already had it in her vitamins, and does to this day and she is 8 years old.

The dentist also liked the idea, he said that the fluoride in the vitamins helped the tooth buds that were inside her gums and that brushing with some fluoride helped her teeth that are on the outside.

But you will find, even with experts, that they disagree on the fluoride on whether it should be in vitamins & water or if it's best for them to not injest it at all.

I have, personally, never had a problem with it but know that too much can cause brown spots on the teeth so you do have to make sure if you are giving your baby water that has fluoride that her vitamins do not contain it (when she gets vitamins and also be sure she gets some from her pediatrician at 6 months, fluoride or not). And I think she is fine for now. But please, I urge you, to run these things by your pediatrician. They are the ones who are trained and are given the updates. Well-meaning moms can give advice but please always run anything medical such as this by your pediatrician. I think she will be fine for now just drinking regular, unfluorinated water. She is so young. They don't even start vitamins until 6 months and fluoride is found in them so I would think that your Dr will say she is too young for fluoride now. PLEASE ALWAYS CHECK!! I was 29, too, with my first and it took a lot of pounding into my head that I needed to check with my pediatrician on things. Turned out, that's what he's there for and is great about answering any questions! No questions are too silly or too small for your baby's Dr. That is his specialty and he/she can help you. :-)

My pediatrician prescribed flouride for me when my kids started growing teeth. As they got oldolder I make them swish with flouride at night that I buy at Wal-mart for kids. Ask your pediatrician when a good time to start is, but I don't think it's necessary before she has teeth. Swallowing too much flouride can cause your body to stop absorbing calcium. It takes a lot to make that happen though. Signs of flouride posioning are continuous vomiting. Posion control told me this when my daughter swallowed a mouthful of flouride. She hadn't swallowed that much.

Hello W.,
I have 3 children who are all teenagers now. I use regular tap water with all 3. I never had a problem with the water in St. Pete or Largo. 2 of the 3 have never had cavaties and I never gave them Flouride drops.
Hope this helps.

I have been giving my baby the nursery water since he was 5 months old. He is now 10 months and we've had NO problems. The fluoride that the water contains is so small that it would not hurt your baby, but it will givi him stronger teeth!!!! hope this helps

I asked my pediatrician about the flouride and he said that there is enough in bottled water alone, you don't need the flouride water.

W., no matter what answers you have gotten about your question, this is something you need to discuss with the pediatrician. Here's from my experience, but again, you need to ask baby's doctor: at 6 months of age my girls started getting prescription vitamins with fluoride drops. Now they're 25 months. At 24 months i stopped giving the prescription vitamins and started giving the flintstones ones, plus switched from bottled water to tap water. Tap water has enough of fluoride in the area i live in.
Good luck

Hi there! I have a 17 month old daughter. Ever since she was born, I've been using Nursery water to make her formula. Even now I only use that to mix w/ her juice. Pediatric dentist recommend fluoride water, so the child will grow strong healthy teeth. I have a friend who is currently pregnant and her dr told her to start drinking fluorinated water, supposedly it even helps the baby before the baby is born. It's more expensive, but all the research I've done tells me it's worth it!

My doctor used to give me flouride pills for my son to take, but stopped the perscription a year ago. He said they are now adding flouride to the water in our area. I don't know where you are located, but if you call your water utility company they can confirm if flouride is added or not.

Good luck.

My son is Autistic and I have been told by his DAN doctor not to give him Floride that it was harmful. We use only filtered water or bottled water. My kids use floride Free Tooth paste and I can tell you there teeth are great.

D.

First of all, good for you that you do your own reading and are asking questions on your own!!!! You are to be commended for your intelligent seeking of right answers.

Never mind what people tell you, if they do not inform themselves, then they are being herded along like cattle. You are on the right track. Fluoride is not just bad for babies, it is bad for everyone. Although it is hard to find even in health food stores, there are toothpastes for children and adults that do not contain fluoride. Make sure you read the labels, but remember that in regular supermarkets every toothpaste sold will contain the awful stuff.

The best water to drink is distilled, this eliminates any of the heavy metals and toxins in other waters. It is possible to make your own distilled water by getting a small countertop distiller. You can do a web search by using just those words, "countertop distiller" and you will get the same basic model from several distributors. They are about $100.00, but they eventually pay for themselves. I have had one for about four years and I run it every night. By morning I have a gallon of fresh distilled water. The easier alternative is to buy it in gallon jugs.

Never allow your dentist to insert fluoride or metal amalgams in your mouth. He may act like you are crazy, but if you begin to do the reading you will know what you're talking about. Don't argue with the AMA or the ADA, just don't let them poison you with their stuff.

Lots of blessings to you and your baby, and remember, read, read, read!!!!!! :-)

http://www.nofluoride.com/

http://thyroid.about.com/cs/toxicchemicalsan/a/flouride.htm

http://www.bragg.com/healthinfo/fluoridefactsFS.html

http://www.curezone.com/dental/fluoride.asp

Love,
A. C

Hi W....

I am not sure why you would be giving water to your baby other than maybe that you're using formula. If there are tummy troubles, it is more likely from the formula itself than from the flouride in the water. There really is no other reason that an infant would need water.

On that note, flouride is in many of city/county water systems in Central Florida, but there are certain areas that do not put it in (i.e. Winter Springs). You would need to find out where the water comes from in your area and if they put it in. It would probably be a good idea for you to seek out your answer from a pediatric dentist (there are some really excellent ones in Central Florida area)to see if it's necessary to give flouride supplements or not, but as far as tummy troubles and flouride, I have never really read/seen any research that would echo this concern.

Hope this helps.
L. Dana, LCCE, CPCE, CD(DONA)
Birth Options: Education and Doula Services
Orlando, FL
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www.hometown.aol.com/doulaMOT

Hi W.,
you don't need to worry about using the nursery water, even filtered city water, most of the time, has low amounts of flouride in it. It is true that you don't want to give them more flouride than she will be getting from the water, however, you also don't have to worry about flouride negatively affecting her if that is all she gets. I just used the filtered water from my frig for my son. Totally eliminating flouride is also not a good idea, so don't worry about doing that. Some people really go nuts over these kind of things, but I hope after reading more about you will be comforatable enough to put that concern out of your mind. We have so much to worry about already. You doctor can tell you more. No, doctor's don't know everything, but they know more than most of us. The internet can be very biased and for every article you find calling flouride "evil", you can find two that say it has very positive attributes as well. Good luck!
M.

If you have city water then the water that you are using already has floride in it and is sufficient.

If you have well water then you may want to ask your pediatrician. The nursery water...from what I have heard...has floride in it. If you are using city water then you really don't want to use the nursery water on top of that.

I asked my daughter's dentist (she is 4 1/2 but has only been on city water for about the last year and before that was strickly on well water with no floride and it does make a difference with their teeth.) My daughter's dentist said that even if she is not drinking the city water if I am cooking with it then she is getting enough and not to supplement with the floride pills or floridated water.

M. N.

Flouride in the water is not good, especially for a 4 month old baby. If you are using tap water, I would advise boiling it before giving it to the baby.