Tongue Tie Revision

Tove went to her first dentist appointment this morning! We went to see Dr. Bailey Coleman in Midtown after she was recommended to me by both Jessica, my lactation consultant, as well as my midwife, Brandy.

We had an early morning appointment and Tove looks like she was mad at me for making us late by getting stuck in traffic on 35 😅 You’d think I would know better at this point. ANYWAYS… If you read her birth story you already know that she was born with a tongue tie. Our midwife cut her tongue tie shortly after birth with scissors because she was unable to latch. However, even after having the frenulum cut, Tove was making a clicking noise when breastfeeding and also kept chilling with her tongue out of her mouth, among other things. There’s quite a few symptoms of tongue tie and if you are getting a poor latch with your newborn, it’s definitely worth having a consultation just to see if there’s any ties present.

Since Tove had been gaining weight steadily and we were still able to breastfeed with a poor latch I was okay with waiting 3 weeks for this appointment. Dr. Coleman comes HIGHLY recommended, and now after I can say she’s definitely worth the wait (if you have the possibility to do so). Had our midwife not cut the frenulum under Tove’s tongue, I don’t think we would have been able to wait longer than a week to readdress the ties.

After the paperwork I sat in the chair with Tove and the dentist had a look inside her mouth and her assistant took some photos for us to see what areas needed to be addressed. Dr. Coleman was very thorough with her explanations of the procedure and the aftercare. She wasn’t pushy in what she believed need to be revised, only presented her findings and then left the rest up to Ben and I (mom & dad).

Tove had a pretty restricted upper lip and the chances for speech impediments as well as a gap between her teeth was a little higher and so Ben decided it was important for him that we got it sorted. Her tongue was still not able to reach the top of her palette which could inhibit the development of her palette and sinuses further down the road, so I think that one was a no brainer that it needed to be addressed as well.

Tove was all smiles and tongue until it came time to do the hard part, using the laser inside her mouth to fix her tongue, lip, and cheek ties. They swaddled her and gave her protective glasses and let us snap a few photos of the little cutie first.

The procedure was the difficult part for me. Ben stepped out of the office and I stayed with Tove. Although the whole procedure probably took less than 2 minutes, it felt like a lifetime for me. My mamma heart was HURTING watching the procedure mainly because I have never heard Tove scream bloody murder. I even told Ben in the car during the ride home that we must be decent parents seeing as though we’ve never heard her cry like that before. Dr. Coleman used the laser to cut four different points inside her mouth, upper lip, 2 cheek ties, and one cut under the tongue. The smell was a little off-putting but also reminded me of when I got laser hair removal.

After the procedure was done, I grabbed my phone and Dr. Coleman had me film while she gave me instructions on daily exercises we have to do with Tove’s lip and tongue. I went ahead and edited the video when I got home to remove Tove’s scream so that I could share it with both Ben and our Nanny. Since the exercises need to be done every 4-6 hours for the next couple of weeks I figured it would be best if every one who watches her knows how to do them. Mostly because if we don’t do the exercises then all of this will be for naught. The mouth heals quickly and can heal the way it was before the procedure, and we don’t want to have to redo this ordeal. I would way prefer it if Tove never even remembers this happened.

After giving us detailed after care instructions, we were left with Tove and I tried to comfort her a bit with my boob but dad was the clear winner when it came to calming her cries. We stopped at Sprouts to grab some Arnica, a natural pain reliever, but I also popped into Walgreens to grab infant Tylenol. Dr. Coleman recommended having Tylenol at home, even if we don’t use it just incase we find ourselves needing some at 2AM randomly. Once we got home we fed her a bottle and I also breastfed her. She instantly had a better latch and the clicking noise went from being heard every other suck to intermiddentily being heard.

Fingers crossed that the healing isn’t too hard on Tove and that we are well on our way to breastfeeding/developing without any more issues!