If you’ve spent months (or years) troubleshooting your child’s bedwetting and nothing has moved the needle, there may be a piece of the puzzle you haven’t considered yet: their airway health. How well your child is breathing while they sleep has huge affects on their pelvic floor function and overall health.
On this episode of the Holistically Well Podcast, I talk with Dr. Kalli Hale, an airway-focused dentist and founder of Toothpillow. You will learn the surprisingly direct link between nasal breathing, jaw development, and issues like bedwetting, teeth grinding, and even pelvic floor dysfunction from children to adults.
Airway Health Is About More Than Straight Teeth
When most parents hear “airway dentistry,” they assume it’s just another way to talk about orthodontics. But according to Dr. Kalli, straight teeth are simply a side effect of what’s actually being treated. The underlying focus: whether a child can breathe well enough, especially at night, to support healthy development.
Every organ in the body depends on oxygen. When a child’s airway is restricted — from a narrow jaw, enlarged tonsils, or habitual mouth breathing — it affects far more than dental alignment. This can influence learning, attention, behavior, and long-term facial development.
The Early Signs Most Parents Miss
Mouth Breathing
The most common and earliest sign is a resting “mouth open” posture — while watching TV, playing, or sleeping. This isn’t just a habit to break. It can gradually reshape a child’s facial structure, since a child’s head and neck development is roughly 55% complete by age two.
Tooth Grinding
Grinding, or bruxism, is often dismissed as something kids simply grow out of. Dr. Kalli pushes back on this firmly: grinding is NEVER normal. And, it usually points to an underlying airway issue that deserves a closer look rather than a wait-and-see approach.
Snoring and Restless Sleep
Snoring, restless sleep, and yes — bedwetting — can all be signs that a child is struggling to move enough air while asleep.
Why So Many Kids Are Struggling to Breathe Well
Part of this shift is generational. Dr. Kalli points to changes in Western diet and feeding patterns. For example: more processed, soft foods that require far less chewing. This in turn means less muscular development of the jaw, tongue, and airway over time.
She’s also notes a difference in muscle demand between breastfeeding and bottle feeding. A baby has to work harder to draw milk from the breast than from a bottle, leading to improved muscle and jaw development. This isn’t a judgment on families who bottle-feed for any reason — it’s simply something to pay closer attention to for oral muscle development from early infancy onward, including how well a newborn is able to latch.
If you’re navigating early feeding challenges, my postpartum program walks through the whole-body side of this season, and my free postpartum guide is a good place to start:
The Bedwetting Connection Nobody’s Talking About
Here’s where the conversation gets especially interesting for parents who feel like they’ve tried everything. Dr. Kalli explains that obstructive, disordered breathing at night keeps a child’s nervous system in a low-grade state of fight-or-flight. Repeated episodes of interrupted breathing trigger a cascade: stress hormones increase, pressure builds in the chest cavity, and this can change hormonal signals that affect how much urine the body produces overnight. In deep sleep, a child may void without ever fully waking.
There’s also an oxygen component. When the brain prioritizes oxygen delivery to critical tissues during a breathing disruption, other systems, including the bladder, can be affected.
This is educational information from our conversation with Dr. Kalli, not a diagnosis for your child. Persistent bedwetting has multiple possible causes, and it’s worth ruling out other medical explanations with your child’s pediatrician alongside exploring the airway connection.
Tongue and Lip Ties: When to Release, When to Wait
This is one of the most common questions Dr. Kalli receives, and her answer is nuanced. In newborns, an oral tie that’s restricting a good latch can affect a baby’s ability to breastfeed effectively. Over time, a mother’s milk supply also becomes affected — which is often reason enough to address it early.
For toddlers and older children, the picture is more individualized. Dr. Kalli requires myofunctional therapy either before or in coordination with any tongue or lip tie release for children old enough to participate. This is because without addressing the muscle function driving the restriction, the tissue can reattach or scar. Some milder ties respond to myofunctional therapy alone, without a release at all. This is a decision best made in partnership with both a dentist and a myofunctional therapist who can assess actual function — not just the presence of a tie.
Because this involves an individualized clinical decision, it’s not something to self-diagnose. If you’re weighing a release for your child, or you suspect your own undiagnosed tie may be contributing to jaw, neck, or shoulder tension as an adult, that’s a conversation for a qualified provider. If you’d like support addressing the whole-body ripple effects — tension patterns, breathing mechanics, or pelvic floor symptoms — you can book a 1:1 session with me here. My team sees patients in-person in Sidney, Ohio for orthopedic and pelvic floor physical therapy. We also treat clients worldwide for virtual holistic health consultations to better help you address root-cause concerns.
Tonsils and Adenoids: Knowing When Removal Is Necessary
Tonsils and adenoids are graded on a scale, and Dr. Kalli notes that research shows expansion-based treatment can meaningfully shrink tonsil and adenoid volume in many children. This reduces and at times eliminates the need for surgery. But for children with the most severe obstruction, where breathing pauses at night are significant, surgical removal may still be the safest and fastest path to restoring adequate oxygen levels.
This is exactly the kind of decision that deserves a full evaluation from your child’s ENT and dental team together, weighing severity, symptoms, and your child’s specific presentation — not a one-size-fits-all rule in either direction.
What This Means for the Moms, Too
This conversation isn’t only about kids. Dr. Kalli and I talked at length about what airway health means for adult women, too! Particularly those of us managing nighttime urgency, jaw tension, or unresolved pelvic floor symptoms.
The same nervous system dysregulation that shows up in a child’s bedwetting can show up in an adult as frequent nighttime urination, TMJ and jaw clenching, or a pelvic floor that struggles to fully relax. Dr. Kalli also shared that non-CPAP options exist for many adults with mild to moderate obstructive sleep apnea, and she strongly encourages every pregnant woman to be screened for sleep apnea, given the impact adequate oxygenation has on both mother and baby throughout pregnancy and delivery.
If you’re pregnant and want more support for this season, my pregnancy program is a great next step, along with my free first trimester guide.
And if nighttime urgency, pelvic pressure, or unresolved tension are part of your own story, this is exactly the kind of pattern we work through together in 1:1 pelvic floor and orthopedic physical therapy — in-office or virtually.
The Trifecta for Faster Progress
For families pursuing airway-focused treatment for bedwetting or related symptoms, Dr. Kalli outlines three components she asks families to commit to together:
- Consistent nightly use of an airway-supportive oral appliance
- Nasal hygiene, to keep the nasal passages clear so nose breathing is actually possible
- Myofunctional therapy, to retrain tongue and muscle function long-term
She notes that progress isn’t always linear — a cold or congestion can cause a temporary setback — but consistency across all three areas tends to produce the most meaningful results.
How to Know If Your Child (or You) Needs Support
If any of this resonates — a child who mouth breathes, grinds, snores, or wets the bed, or an adult who’s dealing with nighttime urgency, jaw tension, or unresolved pelvic floor symptoms — it’s worth having both an airway-focused evaluation and a pelvic floor evaluation on your radar. These systems are more connected than most of us were ever taught.
If you’d like individualized support working through the pelvic floor, nervous system, muscle/fascial tension or the TMJ pain side of this, you can book a 1:1 visit with me here, in-office or virtually.
Is Your Child Breathing Right? What Every Parent Needs to Know About Airway Health with Toothpillow Founder Dr. Kalli Hale | Episode 66 Holistically Well Podcast
This topic goes even deeper on the podcast. Whether you’re a listener, a reader, or a watcher — there’s a version of this conversation waiting for you. Tune in on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, and if it resonates, a review helps more women find their way here.
Listen on Apple | Watch on Spotify | Watch on YouTube
