Tongue Tied

Tongue Tied is something that runs in my family. I have lots of family members who were and got clipped and others that are still tied to this day. At the hospital Jameson had a hard time eating at first and the nurse finally found out he was tongue tied and just needed to work on it and would just have a harder time sucking. After leaving the hospital we began to nurse and that became a whole other problem with eating. Nursing hurt and I mean bleeding hurt. I finally got a nipple shield that that did help but it still hurt. He just could not latch on and had a hard time sucking since he could not fully move his tongue. The milk would leak out the side of his month since he could not get a seal and also the shield would leak and I was concerned he was not getting all he could be getting since a lot was leaking out.

 Well Today we got it clipped. Sounds painful but it went so quick and it was really simple and easy. They take the tongue hold it and clip the skin or whatever it is that hold the tongue down. Once clipped it did bleed a little bit and then he was fine and we gave him a bottle of pumped milk to make sure he could suck ok. By the time he was done with his bottle he was happy and you could not even tell he had anything done. Nursing let me tell you I was a little nervous to nurse without the shield but I needed to see if clipping the tongue helped with nursing. Well it did and I am amazed that something so simple could make such a difference. He nursed without any problems and latched on great and ate fast ( it would take him 30-60 min before to nurse) and it did not hurt me at all. I feel so much better knowing he will be able to nurse better and get more food at a time and not have problems with it. He is such a trooper and I think through the whole thing he was more mad that they were holding him down then the fact that his tongue got clipped. He has amazed me with everything he has gone through and I proud to be his mom. Now that it is over I wish we would have gotten it done sooner but glad it is over and done.

In these pictures you can see his tongue and well that is as far as it would go out of his mouth or well not out of his mouth! I will try and get pictures posted of how much it has changed!

( for those who don't know what it means to be tongue tied I will give a small example. When you are tongue tied you can not move your tongue very well due to the skin under your tongue being attacked to the end of the tongue. Jameson for example could not move his tongue out of this mouth at all. It would go to inside of his lips and that it is.)