This may encourage parents to give their children a nursing bottle with carbonated sodas. Unfortunately we indeed see children with soda or juice in their bottle. The bottle at nap time or bedtime is most dangerous. Fluids may pool around the teeth for hours. The teeth primarily affected by that are the maxillary incisors.
Lower teeth are in general less affected since they are covered by the tongue.
Nursing pattern decay has also been reported with prolonged and unrestricted nighttime breast-feeding. The stagnation of milk about the neck of anterior teeth and the fermentation of the disaccharide lactose, a sugar found in milk, may contribute to this caries process. Under usual feeding regimens neither bottle nor breast milk predispose to caries. Breastfeeding has many beneficial effects, but the specific advantages for oral health are unknown and further research is necessary. The typical high risk child will use a nursing bottle far beyond the first birthday.