Frenulum

After Christian was born, one of the first things the pediatric nurse noticed was that he was a little "tongue-tied." Meaning that his frenulum, or the skin underneath his tongue that holds his tongue down, came almost to the tip of his tongue. It gave his tongue a sort of heart shape and he could barely stick it outside of his mouth as evidenced in the picture below.

There are possibilities for difficulties nursing and future speech problems with babies who are "tongue-tied." However, that doesn't mean that he would for sure end up with a problem. Aaron and I decided to go ahead and get his frenulum clipped to avoid any possible problems down the road. I'm so glad that we did because the days before his appointment with the ENT I was solely pumping and bottle feeding because nursing was excruciatingly painful.

The procedure was pretty straight forward, and because he was a newborn he didn't need any anesthesia. My Mom had Grace and Aaron and I went to Christian's appointment together. Thank heavens Aaron was there, because a parent was required to stay with the baby during the procedure. I was in the next room over trying really hard not to cry my eyes out, and not succeeding in my efforts. The moment they left I started biting my lip in an effort to stop the tears. Aaron said he only cried when they held him down and put the device in his mouth, but not when his frenulum was actually clipped. I heard his crying and completely lost my marbles in the next room.

They brought him back wrapped in a white towel, to catch any blood, I nursed him and we waited for 15 minutes to make sure that everything was fine. Aaron and I laughed as we watched Christian discovering the new movements he could make with his tongue. He kept sticking it out of his mouth and moving it around.

 We packed our little man up and headed home to recuperate from our traumatic morning. And by we, I mean me, because Christian seemed totally un-phased.

Thankfully nursing has gotten so much better since his frenulum was clipped. And we also learned that being "tongue-tied" is genetic. When Aaron's Mom got here she told us she got her clipped as a baby. So Christian is a Barnard through and through.