I've just looked it up on the Aquafresh website and it say that Milk Teeth have a fluoride level of 1000, colgate also do a toothpaste for 2-4 year olds.

Found this info on fluoride in the water:
only a few places (Hartlepool in the North East of England , and parts of Essex) have enough natural fluoride to benefit dental health. Elsewhere it is added to only around 10% of the UK population's water supply - mainly in the West Midlands and the North East. Your water supplier will be able to tell you whether your water supply is fluoridated. The amount of fluoride in the water will vary depending on which area you live in. Fluoride is also naturally present in foods and drinks such as fish and tea, and some countries add fluoride to their table salt and milk instead of fluoridating the water supplies. One cup of tea can contain between 0.3mg and 0.5mg of fluoride, and if you drink it with milk your teeth will also benefit from the calcium. It is best to drink tea without sugar to reduce the risk of dental decay further.

I'm just a bit annoyed now really, I have read lots of sites saying that they shouldn't have adult toothpaste 'cos of the swallowing thing, so why would they hand it out???

If anyone can find out why they give out adult toothpaste I would be very grateful.

We had a dental hygenist come to the baby group last week and they were giving out colgate too. They said it needs to have at least 1000 flouride but babies cannot have any whitening toothpaste.

She said the new milk toothpaste which is handed out in the bounty pack is fine as it has more flouride and as you're only putting such a minimal amount of toothpaste on the brush (not even a pea amount yet) it's not dangerous if they swallow as it's such a little amount.

So we are meant to be using the colgate they give out? Even though it is quite strong? I am so confused

lol now theres an idea. i brought an alcohol free mouth wash yeesterday ( for me not lo) and it tastes awful

i would say the colgate they gave you is fine to use , but your lo may just not like the strong taste. i still dont use a pea sized amount for my lo as he isnt spitting it out properly yet and a pea sized blob sounds like a lot for such a small mouth....
anyway i would either continue using it or find a nicer tasting one as long as it has the recommended 1000 ... of flouride ( you'll find the number on the back of the tube usually )

Yeah I will do. At least we have no swallowing probs yet, there was no way that toothpaste was staying in her mouth! I will see what I can find for now and prob start using the Colgate once we have started weaning/she has teeth/she is used to new flavours.

I think it's more of a "this is an example of a safe toothpaste" rather than we should be using that exact one.
I'm fussy with my toothpaste so I'm not expecting any different from LO! As long as it has the recommended amount of flouride and no whitening then it's fine from what I can gather!

Lol, yeah I didn't mean I will only ever buy that exact one from now on more that it is a big tube and they obviously expect us to use it? I don't know.

Ooo this makes me so mad!!! We had a talk at our baby group from some dental proffessional or other who was harping on about using family toothpaste with 1500ppm flouride for babies and not the low flouride toothpastes. Our dentist told us ot use low flouride so I disregarded the comments of the woman at the group. She was utterly one sided about flouride, going on about how it should be put into everyone's water supply and people only don't want it in their water because it is mass medication. Wrong!!!

She failed to mention flouridosis. She said people in the NW have the worst teeth and attributed this to a lack of flouride in the water rather than the fact that we have very soft water which is both a little acidic and totally lacking in calcium. My Mum also told me she remembers when the use of flouride in the water first came about in the '70s and everyone was very angry about it. Apparently flouride is a toxic by-product of the aluminium processing industry and instead of having to deal with it they got to sell it on and make a profit. The whole thing is extremely questionable.

As I said in my first post we use low flouride. I will continue to do so until he's able to spit it out. We were also told not to even rinse their mouths! So we pile in the flouride which they then swallow and don't even rinse out mouths and when flouridosis starts we wonder why?