Saturday, October 24, 2009

drooling, drooling, drooling

We have a drooler! Over the last couple days Nate has started producing ever increasing amounts of drool. Doing some reading, drooling is often associated with teething. Oh no, not teething already. We were just starting to get Nate into some better sleep patterns (except for two nights this week that he had his own plan) and we don't need teething to get in the way.

Well it could be teething, but most likely the effects of teething (actually cutting of tooth) are probably several weeks or even months away. It seems that the teeth starting to move upward are a catalyst for the body to produce more saliva (drool). With Nate it is certainly working.

I'm now finding out there are a lot of benefits to this saliva, even though it seems to be going everywhere.
  • The saliva helps heal esophageal lining that is most likely been damaging by stomach acid that is present in spit up. And Nate does spit up regularly so that is certainly a benefit.
  • The saliva will help the process of digestion once Nate starts eating some solid foods, which could be soon.
  • Saliva also help control bacteria in the mouth. This bacteria is a cause of gum problems and bad breath. So Nate should have less morning breath, even though he normally just has milk breath.

Babies don't produce any more saliva than adults, but babies don't know how to swallow it and it ends up running everywhere. The last couple days Nate has been wet. Sherri and I have ended up wet as well as lots of things that are near Nate. Just Nate growing up.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting post, seems like saliva has more uses then soaking my shirt before leaving for work!

    ReplyDelete