This morning we went in for Bennett's 8 week wellness checkup. My big boy is 13lb 6oz and 23.4 inches long! He's going to be my linebacker, I can already tell. :) Overall, he's a healthy, happy, PERFECT baby boy!
At Bennett's 1 week checkup we were told that at some point he would need to have his tongue clipped because his frenulum extends all the way to the tip of his tongue. Because he's clearly thriving and not having any issues with feeding, we decided to just watch it and see what happens as he gets older. Unfortunately, I've noticed over the past couple of weeks that he has issues keeping the pacifier in his mouth and he doesn't do well drinking from a bottle. It's always been in the back of my mind that eventually his tongue would have to be clipped, I have just been waiting for some sort of sign as to when. I've talked to a family friend who has children that had this procedure done and she said it was easy-peasy, so I never really worried about it. Once I saw that Bennett was having issues with the pacifier and bottle though, I became concerned about someday weaning him and how he will do with a bottle or sippy cup full time. It's also been brought to my attention that being "tongue tied" many times can cause speech problems, and as you can see from the picture Bennett's frenulum doesn't even allow him to lift his tongue up or come out of his mouth at all. So today I asked our nurse practitioner (who also happens to be a close friend!) about all of these things and she suggested speech therapy to try and temporarily resolve these issues. That sounded good and all, but it wouldn't fix the problem and I really want to be proactive and prevent any future issues if possible. I personally have had issues with my tongue, I'm what you call a "tongue thruster" and it caused me to need braces and special exercises to teach myself how to swallow all over again. I just really don't want that for Bennett, so Scott and I decided to go ahead and have the procedure done sooner rather than later.
I was just about to text Valerie about our decision when she called me. (Gotta love having a personal relationship with your NP!) She had been thinking about the exact same thing and decided to call the ENT clinic at Children's and see when the cut-off is for an outpatient procedure vs. surgery with anesthesia, etc. It just so happens that 8 weeks is when they stop doing the tongue clippings in the clinic, but they agreed to call me and set up an appointment for their next available slot. Not five minutes later someone from the ENT clinic called me and we made an appointment for tomorrow afternoon at 12:50 to have Bennett's tongue clipped. A big thank you to Aunt Val for having my babies' best interest at heart and taking excellent care of us! She's also going to keep Deacon for me so he doesn't have to be there during the procedure, it's pretty much guaranteed that he would have had a meltdown. Don't know what we'd do without her. :)
Please keep Bennett in your thoughts and prayers tomorrow afternoon. I know it's a pretty standard procedure and he won't be in any pain, but I'm still a worried Mama about the whole thing. It will be much worse for me than it will be for him, and I'm grateful that we have the opportunity to do it without having to explain it to him, putting him under or admitting him to the hospital. This way he won't remember a thing and we can avoid all those issues that he otherwise would have had to overcome. Hopefully everything will go smoothly and tomorrow I'll have a good report after it's all over. :)
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