just discovered problem with DS' mouth

lpennie16

DH and I were looking in DS' mouth to see if he was getting more teeth b/c he has been so cranky lately so we thought he might be teething.
When I tried to pull his upper lip back to expose the gumline, we noticed that there is a piece of flesh connecting his upper lip to between his two front teeth so that we couldn't really pull the lip back. Does that make sense?

Its the same piece of flesh that we all have, but mine is way up above the gumline almost under the bottom of my nose. So I'm calling the pedi tomorrow. Has anyone ever heard of this? I'm assuming they'll have to do a small surgery to correct it.

avz2azb

It's probably not a problem. As your DS's jaw grow, it will grow vertically and the piece of skin will move up. Dentists will watch it, but don't normally worry about it until kids are getting their permanent teeth. DD's is really low too.

Mominator

Why are you so anxious to have this surgically altered? Unless it is causing him problems with eating/drinking/talking I wouldn't even make a call the pedi and would just bring it up at his next appt.

LukeAndAmanda

It's called a frenulum. Some of the DC's on here have already had it corrected, and some have it, but are being put on watch basically by the dentist. I had mine corrected when I was 13 because of braces. Sometimes they don't correct it at all. I don't know how they usually do the procedure, but I know they put me to sleep for mine. But I don't think they usually correct it right away.

ETA: I don't know the difference it makes in having it taken out as a younger child, but my teeth have since seperated slightly even after having it corrected and having braces.

MissMoochie

My brothers had the same thing and the dentist didn't think that it was necessary to cut it until they had braces, if it didn't move up on it's own. They wound up getting it cut at 17 years old. I wouldn't mess with it right now if it's not interfering with anything.

Brit&Nate

I had it when I was a kid and DD also has it. My dentist clipped mine when I was about 5 because it was causing a big gap in my two front teeth. We'll get DD's clipped also when she's older.

lpennie16

Ok, thanks guys!

I'm not "anxious" to get it surgically altered. Its just that I had never heard of this happening or that its quite common so I didn't know if it was serious or not. I will still ask the pedi about it.

LucyGoosey81

Interesting.  DS has the same thing, and I didn't even think about it at all.  The pedi never really mentioned it either.  I just figured it was something that would go away as he got older.  Hmm.  I wonder if this is the reason his top lip would always have so much trouble latching when I BF'd.  We figured it out anyway, but I wonder if this was it.

saraheg77

LukeAndAmanda:

It's called a frenulum. Some of the DC's on here have already had it corrected, and some have it, but are being put on watch basically by the dentist. I had mine corrected when I was 13 because of braces. Sometimes they don't correct it at all. I don't know how they usually do the procedure, but I know they put me to sleep for mine. But I don't think they usually correct it right away.

 This... I also had mine corrected in about 3rd grade and had braces on my two front teeth...

emiliemadison

Yep, my DS has the same thing and will have to have it snipped soon-ish. It's causing his top front teeth to have a gap between them.

BecauseICan

DD has it as well, and we took her to an oral surgeon to have them look at it.  They said not to do anything yet, but to wait and see if it does cause a problem--it's kind of a 50/50 sort of thing, and if you snip it too early, it can regenerate which can make the initial surgery unnecessary.  DH had it and so did his mom--in DH it caused horrible issues w/ teeth that were not correctable w/ braces and with MIL it caused a speech impediment as well as dental issues--so yes, we were in a hurry to have it looked at and potentially fixed b/c I don't want her to have to go through that.  Luckily we saw a great oral surgeon who said it would be best to revisit the issue in another year, and potentially avoid a second surgery.

GabbyG

DS has it, too. The frenulum under his tongue was short, too - we had that one clipped (which was a 2-second procedure in his pedi's office and no bleeding). I think correcting (if necessary - a big IF) the one above the front teeth would not be a such a quick procedure in such a young child. They would probably have to be put under a general anesthesia (ugh), so it's likely worth taking a wait-and-see approach. If it needs to corrected, they usually like to do it before the permanent teeth come in (from my research, anyway) so the permament teeth don't come in with such a huge gap.

skoorbnibor

I had it and had it surgically removed at about the age of 8