Supporting Infant Oral Health & Development

At Bickiepegs, we are committed to raising awareness about the importance of early oral development. To support healthcare professionals, charities, and community initiatives, we offer free samples of our products to those working with infants and young children.

We welcome requests from:

• NHS professionals – Midwives, health visitors, paediatric dentists, speech therapists
• Charities & community programs – Supporting infant feeding, oral health, and parental education
• Health professionals & educators – Advocating for early oral development

Please reach out to us via our contact form for the free sample request.

Research and references

We also provide Health Professional Packs containing informational leaflets, opinion papers and posters for clinics and community settings. Please contact us for more information.

You can also access free resources below:

Dental Check by 1 Certificate #DCBy1 

SMile4Life Monster Teeth poster

Articles on learning to drinking from an open cup

• Choosing cups for your baby by NCT

• The Doidy Cup is a suitable toddler training cup to help children learn drinking independently – Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust

• Aim to introduce cup drinking by 6 months – NHS: drinks and cups for babies; Drinking from a cup Scotland NHS

• Open cup is also an alternative method for those who refuse bottles – Cup feeding as an alternative method

• BDA The Association of British Dietitians Policy Statement Introducing a Cup to an Infant’s Diet.

• Public Health England Oral Health Survey of three year old children 2013

• National Oral Health Promotion Group Position Paper on the use of no spill design feeder trainer cup 2011.

• Midwifery Digest 2006 Neonatal and Infancy Cup feeding revisited

• The COMA weaning report clearly recommends that from 6 months of age infants should be introduced to drinking from a cup and the use of a bottle should be actively discouraged after the age of 1 year. (Weaning and The Weaning Diet. COMA 1994 Department of Health London HMSO)

Research on hard diet and jaw development

• Earlier introduction to harder foods is significantly associated with better orthodontic outcomes – Relation between nutrition and jaw development

• Hard foods are better for jaw development and overall jaw structure, contributing to stout jawlines – research from Institute of Tokyo

• Change of feeding behaviour from hard to ultraprocessed soft food is associated weaker jaw performance

• Jaw development, orthodontics and hard diets – on Scientific American

Articles on chewing skills practise, introduction of solids and new textures

• Providing chewing practise for your children – from Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne

• Learning to bite and chew is essential for development – Speech and Language Therapy

• Around 6 months, you should move your baby from soft, pureed foods onto more solid, harder foods, helping them learn how to chew: NHS – your baby’s first solid foods

• Chewing development with hard munchables from Kent NHS

Articles on Children’s Dental Health

• Child Dental Health Survey 2013, England, Wales and Northern Ireland [NS] Publication date: March 19, 2015 Health and Social Care information centre.

• The 2013 Children’s Dental Health (CDH) Survey, commissioned by the Health and Social Care Information Centre, is the fifth in a series of national children’s dental health surveys that have been carried out every ten years since 1973.