You don’t understand. You’ve done everything the lactation consultant has told you to do, and yet your baby still isn’t latching. What are you doing wrong?
It may not be you at all! It could be indication that something is amiss with your baby’s oral function—a problem called a tongue-tie or excess tissue holding their tongue against the bottom of the mouth. In this situation, your baby may need a frenectomy, which is the procedure of gently removing this connective tissue with laser technology.
How can you tell whether your baby needs a frenectomy? Here are three clear signs and how this procedure can help your child thrive!
Difficulty Eating or Nursing
Some children exhibit the signs of a restrictive tongue-tie right away when it comes to latching and breastfeeding. Without the necessary range of motion, the tongue isn’t able to create suction on the nipple, leading the baby to potentially bite down in efforts to get the milk. As a result, the nursing parent can experience sore nipples, and the baby can still feel hungry.
Even if your baby’s tongue-tie doesn’t interfere with their ability to nurse, it could still affect how they eat later in life. Their tongue is supposed to move food around in their mouth and help with swallowing. If it’s unable to move around freely, certain textures or foods can cause them to gag easily or even throw up.
A laser frenectomy gives the tongue more freedom to move as it was designed to, enabling your child to eat more foods and continue to grow and develop.
Speech Impediments
With various sounds in whatever language, your child needs to have use of their tongue. When the tongue is not free to move as it should, these sounds can come out incorrectly as speech impediments, particularly with r, l, th, and s. As you might imagine, this can lead to a lot of confusion, miscommunication, as well as self-consciousness for the speaker and the listener alike.
Fortunately, once the tongue-tie is released, difficult sounds are much easier to annunciate, helping your child communicate more clearly.
Mouth Breathing
While at rest, a person usually holds their tongue at the roof of their mouth just behind the front teeth, and they breathe through their nose. However, a tongue-tie can keep it at the bottom of the mouth, forcing the mouth to stay open to breathe. Why is mouth breathing a bad thing? Mouth breathing creates a warm, dry environment, perfect for oral bacteria to thrive and wreak havoc on your child’s smile.
Once corrected through a frenectomy, the tongue can rest in the mouth where it is supposed to go. Then, your child can breathe more easily through their nose, protecting their oral health.
Ultimately, the person who is best qualified to tell you whether your child needs a frenectomy is your pediatric dentist. They can properly diagnose and treat this issue, so you and your baby can get back to nursing and have successful, close bonding time.
About the Practice
Dr. Glen’s Happy Teeth is unique in that we have a board-certified pediatric dentist, a general dentist, and an orthodontist on our staff to meet the various needs of our patients. Using laser technology, Dr. Glen Shanock can release a restrictive lip or tongue-tie with little to no bleeding or pain. To learn more about frenectomies, you can contact Dr. Glen at the Long Beach office by calling 516-431-5855 or clicking on our Contact Us page.