Pregnancy and early motherhood can come with their ups and downs, and they can put a mark on your smile if you’re not careful.
As female hormones fluctuate and spike during and after pregnancy, expecting and new mothers often find that their dental health worsens. In the most extreme cases, a woman’s smile can become dangerously at risk if they don’t take good care of it.
Gingivitis and Periodontal Disease
The hormone progesterone surges during pregnancy, changing how a woman’s gums react to plaque and oral bacteria. Gum tissue becomes more sensitive and can quickly redden and swell as gingivitis develops. Gingivitis is the earliest stage of periodontal disease, and an estimated 60 to 75% of women develop it during pregnancy.
Common gum disease symptoms include:
Bleeding gums
Painful, swollen gums
Red or purple gums
Chronic bad breath and unpleasant taste in the mouth
Receding gums
Loose teeth and changed bite
Dentures no longer fitting
Does Gingivitis Go Away?
Most pregnancy gingivitis cases clear up on their own between the third trimester and shortly after pregnancy. Without spiking progesterone levels, their gums can fight off gum disease more effectively. However, some women find that their gum disease worsens into periodontitis. During this later stage, oral bacteria attack the gums, bone, and connective tissues keeping your teeth rooted in your mouth. This damage first shows itself with teeth looking longer as gums pull away and start receding. With receding gums come deep pockets between your teeth and gums, which can quickly capture food, plaque, and bacteria to speed up your smile’s deterioration. Eventually, the harm done to your teeth’s supportive structure can cause your teeth to become loose and start shifting. Left to its own devices, your teeth may even fall out as the bacteria spreads across your mouth and to the rest of your body.
Can You Fix Periodontal Disease?
Gingivitis can be fixed with two weeks of consistent dental hygiene and a dental cleaning at the dentist. More advanced stages aren’t so simple to fix. Gingivitis doesn’t cause any permanent damage to your gums, so removing the problem’s source—dental plaque—solves the problem without any trouble. However, once periodontitis develops, you can’t fix the issue for good. You can only manage your gum disease and prevent it from worsening with professional treatment:
Deep cleaning. While dental cleanings may be amazing as scraping away the plaque and bacteria buildup on your teeth, they don’t go further than the gum line. A deep cleaning is used to remove everything trapped under the gums. The teeth’s roots are then smoothed down to help the gums reattach.
Gum flap surgery. When deep cleaning teeth frequently doesn’t keep your gum pockets clean for long, you may need gum flap surgery. This procedure is used to clean the tooth down to the root and reduce the pocket’s size, keeping your teeth and gums cleaner longer.
Tissue grafts. As gums recede and connective bone is destroyed, your teeth will become loose and in danger of falling out. The missing tissue can be replaced by transplanting new material in its place. These grafts may be synthetic, donated, or taken from elsewhere in your mouth.
Sometimes late treatment and worsening gum disease can damage the structure keeping your smile intact beyond repair. No amount of grafts or oral surgeries can prevent your teeth from loosening further. While the teeth would eventually fall out on your own, our Bellflower dentists can save you a lot of time and pain with a tooth extraction.
Dry Mouth and Cavities
When a woman is breastfeeding, much of her body’s hydration is used to provide for her hungry infant. New mothers should drink more water than usual to make up for the lost fluid to prevent chronic dry mouth. Dry mouth is a hidden killer when it comes to dental health. Many of our patients think their smiles are safe because they brush twice and floss once every day. However, a lack of saliva means their mouths can’t break down food like they should, leaving plaque and bacteria buildup on your enamel all day. For breastfeeding mothers with dry mouth, especially those who fall back on their dental routine, this can quickly develop dental decay and cavities.
You should be wary of any tooth decay your smile develops, not just for your dental health but also for your child’s. Baby teeth are more sensitive to decay than adult ones. Even sharing the same spoon with your newborn can transfer cavity-causing bacteria to their mouth. Before their first tooth comes in, make sure to gently wipe your infant’s gums with a washcloth daily to keep their mouths clean of bacteria. Once their baby teeth start emerging, you should brush them twice a day.
Can I Brush Away A Cavity?
During the earliest stages of tooth decay, brushing your teeth and using fluoridated toothpastes and rinses can be used to stop the decay in its tracks. In many cases, the damage can be reversed by remineralizing the teeth with fluoride, restoring your smile to full health. At this point, plaque and bacteria have only started attacking the outer enamel and are only surface-deep.
However, once a cavity develops, you can’t try to fix the damage on your own by brushing and flossing better. A cavity forms once decay breaks through the enamel and creates a hole in your tooth’s surface, reaching the dentin below. This pit can’t be filled naturally. The decay will only continue working its way deeper into your tooth, from the dentin into the central dental pulp. Your dentist will need to perform a filling or crown to remove and repair your tooth’s diseased areas.
When the dental pulp is reached, your cavity will often make its appearance obvious with a painful toothache. The pulp contains the tooth’s vital nerves and blood vessels, making this the most sensitive part. As the cavity eats its way through the tooth, it will eventually break through the root and spill into the surrounding gum tissue. During the final stage of tooth decay, a dental abscess forms, and your tooth’s life is put at stake.
Can A Badly Decayed Tooth Be Saved?
In some cases, we can save an abscessed tooth with an emergency root canal. Root canals are the last defense a dentist has against cavities. Our dentists will remove all of the decay and damaged pulp and drain any tooth abscesses during this procedure. After the tooth’s canal has been cleaned, we will fill it with gutta-percha before restoring the tooth’s surface with a filling or crown. This restoration also helps reinforce the tooth and keep it protected from future harm and decay.
Sometimes the cavity has progressed so far that even a root canal can’t save the tooth. In these cases, an extraction is needed to remove it and stop the decay from spreading to nearby teeth and gum tissue. However, tooth removal is only our last option in worst-case scenarios as we always want to preserve as many of your natural teeth as possible.
Tooth Grinding
Nighttime teeth grinding, or bruxism, is particularly common with pregnant women and newborn mothers due to their physical and mental stress. During pregnancy, carrying a baby bump can strain the muscles in your neck and face. Along with disruptive sleep, this often leads to clenching and grinding their teeth together at night. Even once the baby is born, the stress doesn’t go away. Trying to adapt to life with a newborn brings its own restless nights and stresses.
Without treatment, such as a mouth guard at night, bruxism can cause:
Cracked and chipped teeth
Increased tooth sensitivity
Unusual wear and tear on teeth
Broken fillings and crowns
Jaw, face, and ear pain
Chronic headaches
TMJ disorder
Restless and disruptive sleep
Even if dental breaks and fractures don’t go deep enough to be painful, they can leave neat pathways for plaque and decay to follow. We always recommend our patients see us for a consultation, even if they don’t think their tooth grinding is “serious enough.” Many dental problems fly under the radar until it’s too late, and intensive emergency treatment is needed. In many cases, small chips or cracks can be repaired with cosmetic work, like dental bonding or porcelain veneers.
Loose Teeth
While late-stage periodontal disease can loosen teeth, even pregnant women with healthy gums can notice their teeth wiggling. In most cases, there’s nothing to worry about. The teeth’s supporting bones and connective tissues may come loose, but they will tighten back up after the third trimester. However, since wiggling teeth can be a sign of worse problems, we suggest coming into our Bellflower office for a checkup to ensure everything is okay. Coupled with periodontitis, this could otherwise create unwanted gaps in your beautiful smile if left untreated.
