Tongue Tie Photos

I have been asked for some photos of my children’s tongue ties and also of my husbands tongue tie correction. In case you haven’t had a chance to read my post on Tongue Tie you can find it here.

First I’ll start with my 4 year old’s tongue. I’m sorry there appears to be some food on her face and tongue in these photos. Her tongue does have a tip to it but she can’t come close to reaching the roof of her mouth and you can see a slight indent in the center. When she was a newborn it was more obviously heart shaped. I wish I would have pursued getting it clipped then, but perhaps if I had the posterior portion would have been ignored and we wouldn’t have been able to identify that issue in her now because we thought it was already fixed.

Here is just another picture of it.

Here is her lip tie. A few weeks before I took this photo she fell and hit her lip on a trashcan and it ripped a little but not nearly enough. You can kind of see that in the photo. You can’t really tell from this photo but her center teeth also angle inward in the center.

 

Here is my husband’s tongue before the procedure. You can see pretty clearly that his tongue is pulled slightly heart shaped a the tip. This was him raising his tongue as high as he could.

Right after the procedure. No stitches or bandaging and you can see that it isn’t bleeding. It also already has more of a tip on it.

One week post op. Not sure why the image has that line in it. Already looking well healed.

And this was from his final follow up visit, I think 3 weeks post op. You can see how well it healed. You can also see that his tongue now has a tip on it. At his first appointment the Dr observed that his tongue was enlarged from the extra use it got trying to compensate for being tethered. You can see in this photo that behind that pointy tip his tongue appears to be very thick.

My husband didn’t have a lisp or any other obvious speech impediment. He did however tend be be difficult to understand when he was speaking quickly. I accused him of “speed mumbling”. It was frustrating for both of us. He also tended to swish his drink at the end of a meal. A habit that I found disgusting. When I learned about tongue tie one thing that I learned is that your tongue helps to clean food off of your teeth. Since his tongue was tied it couldn’t do that job. Hence his habit of swishing at the end of a meal. I still think it is disgusting but then so is food stuck in your teeth long term. The good news is that since his frenectomy I rarely have difficulty understanding him when he speaks and he no longer needs to swish at the end of a meal. Yay! He has not had to do any sort of oral therapy since his procedure but it is common for that to be necessary, especially for adults, to overcome the bad habits that having a tied tongue has caused a person to adopt. I have often said that my husband is the luckiest person I know and his not needing any therapy to follow up on this procedure is yet another example of that. Don’t expect the same results as a norm.

 

Last but not least this link was sent to me this morning. It shows some photos of babies with tongue ties and explains how to identify it. These photos and explanations are really good. One thing it points out is the importance of an expert and properly evaluating the baby for all kinds of tongue ties. If your Dr has looked at your babies mouth and said “it looks like he has good mobility” or something like that but hasn’t done a thorough evaluation then they may be missing something that could be easily corrected.

Is my baby tongue tied?-link

One thing that I need to address is the posterior tongue tie. I feel like I now finally fully understand it. It took a conversation with a Dr who is an expert on these and the website I just linked to straighten out my understanding. The posterior tongue tie is in the middle but it is sub-mucosal. An anterior tongue tie can be seen but the posterior tongue tie can’t be seen because it is underneath the floor of the mouth. It can still be felt however holding the tongue down in the center. It may be very thin like a filament or very thick like a rope.

I hope that this has helped some of you decide if this is something to pursue getting corrected in your family member. Both of my girls are still in need of getting theirs corrected and I am still working to find the right Dr for the job. Their ages plus the complicated nature of my younger daughters tongue tie makes finding the right person tricky. Hopefully that will be resolved soon.

Do you or a family member have a tongue tie? What are you doing about it? Next step after this is solved will be getting my children into speech therapy.