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Hawaii Babies
redshoegirl
member
tongue ties = gone :D
redshoegirl
member
The boys' tongue tie snipping appointment was today. It was so quick and easy...I really wish I'd put my foot down and insisted it happen before now! They sprayed some local anesthetic on the frenulum, gave it a minute to numb the area, and then snipsnipsnip and it was done. I think we were in the waiting area longer than we were in the treatment room - the actual procedure only took about 1.5 min each (mostly numbing time) and we were out of there in 10 min.
They both cried, but only because the anesthetic tastes really bad and because they were mad at being briefly held down. The doctor said that the anesthetic wears off quite quickly but they shouldn't be in any real pain, and so far that seems to be true - Dash did give a short squeal when he was feeling around in his mouth about an hour later and poked right where the snip was, but otherwise it doesn't seem to bother them.
I'm so, so glad we got it done! 
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Re: tongue ties = gone :D
Jaime & Brent
Oahu, Hawaii | Sept. 9, 2005
My Food Blog - Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats
yay!!!! glad to know it wasn't bad!
d has a slight tongue tie too. but he could stick his tongue out all the way and has a good latch. the pedi says it might affect his speech in the future, but there's no way to tell for sure 'cause it's mild.
i think i missed it, but how did you decide to get the boys' tongue ties snipped?
hawaii 10.2008 plan ;P married bio ???
It took us a long time to decide, especially because their ties were worse than mild but not truly severe - on a scale of 1-10, they were probably a 5.
When they were born, they could latch and eat - three lactation consultants swore they had "perfect latches" even though they looked that way from the outside, I think perhaps they actually didn't latch properly with their tongues (they made a distinctive clicking sound while nursing, which I discovered later is a big red flag when your LO has a tongue tie). I've often wondered if that was partly to blame for our BFing failure.
They've never been able to stick out their tongues - they could reach the tip to their gums but not beyond, but we were told by several doctors that this was sufficient.
Because both LCs and GPs/pedis told us they didn't need them snipped except in extreme cases, we kept waiting to see if it would improve naturally. The problem is that there's a big anti-intervention movement in the medical profession here - which in general I think is fantastic, but I think that in some areas it's gone a bit too far and now kids such as my own who actually need those interventions can't easily or routinely get them.
Anyway, as time went on, we began to question whether it was really OK. We noticed that they were having some difficulties with solids - they could eat lumps and finger foods, but sometimes struggled to move food around in their mouths with their tongues, often reaching inside their mouths with their fingers if food went into their cheeks because they couldn't lick around their gums. As a speech therapist explained to me later, this is a problem because if you can't clean your teeth with your tongue, there is a much higher risk of major cavities and gum problems in childhood.
We also noticed that they didn't make certain sounds - specifically, the ones that require you to press your tongue to the roof of your mouth (like "la"). We first picked up on this when we realized they were nearly 9 months old and although they'd babbled for ages, they'd never said "dadadada" - usually one of the very first sounds a baby makes. They did eventually figure it out, but they had to contort their tongues to do it and obviously it was very delayed.
At that point, I started to suspect the ties were affecting their vocal development and made an appointment with the speech therapist to get some advice. After watching them eat and listening to their usual babble, she agreed that Will absolutely needed his tie snipped (and even said it probably should have happened at birth), and Dash probably did (his was a bit milder than Will's).
We ultimately decided that at absolute worst, it would be a relatively painless, unnecessary (but harmless) procedure - at best, it would prevent them from having to go through years of speech therapy and still get the ties snipped later on in life. So we decided to get it done - there's only one doctor in my town who will do it and it took us 2 months to get an appointment on his roster, so today was very exciting for us.
ETA: sorry this is so long! I guess I just wanted to be thorough LOL!
hawaii 10.2008 plan ;P married bio ???
TTC/PG Blog | Mommy Blog
LOL well you know I'm nothing if not thorough!
I'd never even heard of tongue ties until Will and Dash were born, even though once I read a description, I realized that one of my cousins has one - we always just thought it was a funny oddity that she can't stick her tongue out and as a kid I remember deciding she must just have a short tongue lol. In our generation, they were routinely snipped at birth - hell, half the time the mother probably didn't even know, it was just automatically done when a doctor noticed it post-birth.
For our situation, it came down to a simple decision that the the potential benefits outweighed the potential negatives. If we got it done and it wasn't really necessary, the absolute worst case scenario was that in the future they'd be able to easily lick an ice cream cone (as long as someone with experience performs the procedure, the only real medical risk is an infection in the snipped area, but that's pretty rare as long as you monitor the healing). On the other hand, if we got it done and it was necessary, then we'd save our boys years of speech therapy and a more uncomfortable recovery should they need the ties snipped later on. So either way to us it was worth it - of course, it may be different with your little man since his is so mild.
Oh one more thing I should mention was that one of the reasons the speech therapist recommended we get it done was because they couldn't lick over their gums. I know I already talked about the oral hygiene issue, but this was something else. Although it's sometimes stated as a fact, tongue ties don't actually "stretch" with age. However, if the child can stick their tongue over their front bottom teeth, the frenulum can sometimes get naturally snipped by being dragged between the teeth ridges. In Will and Dash's case, they couldn't stick their tongues out that far so there was no chance that could happen, and thus it was quite unlikely that it would naturally improve with time. So that was another factor in our decision.