Out of town

Just to Kuantan visiting Adik & her family. Also to give ourselves a bit of fresh air after battling with flood, ruined cars and sick kids. Adik was doing pretty well, despite in her 4th month of pregnancy and chasing after 8 months old Haziq. Even managed to prepare big serving of chicken rice for our lunch. Thanks dear.

Haziq however, has developed a case of tongue-tie (ankyloglossia). Adik already noticed it during the first few days after Haziq was born but, since he did not have any trouble breastfeeding, decided to do nothing and just wait for it to correct itself. However, more and more people kept on commenting on that and suggesting to Adik & Faizul to bring him for corrective surgery. Well...they finally decided to go see a pead this coming Monday for fear that Haziq may end up with speech problem if left untreated.

Here is a summary of what a tongue-tie is about.

The term actually refers to a condition where the tongue remains more anchored to the bottom of the mouth than it should be, restricting movement. Babies and children with this condition have a short lingual frenulum (the piece of skin that joins the tongue to the floor of the mouth) and it may or may not cause problems with breastfeeding and speech.

A tongue-tie is not always apparent and may not be picked up until your baby has feeding difficulties (see below) or speech problems at the age of two or three.

The good news is that lots of babies with tongue-tie experience no problems at all, either with feeding or speech. However, some babies will have problems with breastfeeding because they won't be able to use their tongue to massage their mother's nipple and areola. If they can't stick their tongue out beyond their lower gum they won't get enough milk. Any of the following can be symptoms of tongue-tie:

• Failure to latch on
• Slipping off the breast while feeding
• Sore nipples, mastitis and/or blocked ducts
• Continuous feeding
• Colic
• Slow weight gain.

A baby with tongue-tie may not have all of the above symptoms and some babies will have these symptoms, but not have a tongue-tie.

How is it treated? This is highly controversial — prevailing medical opinion says do nothing and it will usually right itself by the end of the first year of life. If the baby still has a problem after this period, a paediatric surgeon may consider surgery to divide the frenulum from the base of the mouth (a procedure called a frenulotomy). Others will only perform surgery much later if the child has had speech problems and has not responded to speech therapy. But, in some areas, doctors are prepared to divide the frenulum much earlier if the baby either has problems with breastfeeding or has a sibling with speech problems due to a tongue-tie.

What does the surgery involve? Again, it varies. Some do the division with a general anaesthetic requiring a hospital stay, while in others it is done without anaesthetic on a day-case basis. The procedure itself involves simply snipping the skin to divide the frenulum from the bottom of the mouth and takes a matter of seconds.

Excerpted from Babycentre.com