Successful "Surgical Procedure"

Thanks to all of you who expressed concern for Zach. He had the little surgical procedure at 10:30 am Friday morning (9/5). Including the time it took to numb the area, the whole thing took 5 minutes tops. Zach was as mad about the numbing process - two long Q-tip things with gross tasting stuff were held under his tongue for 20 seconds - as with the cutting process.

We went to a really nice ENT named Dr. Gibbs. (His name reminded me of Pirates of the Caribbean). They had me hold Zach on my lap and hold him so he was facing away from me. This thankfully spared me from having to see the graphic details. It still broke me heart to hear him start crying harder when the cutting happened but that part took maybe 10 seconds.

Luckily the lingual frenulum (illustrated below):
is just a tiny piece of tissue that doesn't have much if anything as far as nerves and blood vessels go. It only bled a tiny bit and by the time I got a chance to look under Zach's tongue it didn't look like anything had been cut. The area may have been just a little red for a day. We also didn't need to do anything special to take care of the area.

Good news on the eating front. Zach was able to latch on right after the surgery even better than before. Apparently we were really lucky that he could latch on at all to begin with since most tongue-tied babies aren't successful with it. Zach loves to eat and has always been a natural at it. Now that he can latch on better we don't hear quite as many funny grunting sounds while he's eating.

Zach recovered pretty quickly and stopped crying after a few minutes. He slept for awhile after we got home. I'm glad we got it taken care of when we did since it's a bigger procedure once you're older. I'm also so glad Zach did and is doing as well as he is. It was nice there was so little to worry about after all. (Sorry no exciting pictures from the process).