graham definitely takes after his father, even down to the tight frenulum (piece of tissue that connects the bottom of the mouth to the under surface of the tongue). we visited the ent today to have him evaluate how tight graham's was and what course of action (if any) we needed to take.
it turns out that graham's frenulum wasn't a severe case, but it was hard to predict how he would be effected by it in the future. the two factors that the doctor said to consider were 1 - his nutrition (is he getting as much as he can when breastfeeding) and 2 - if left untreated he could possibly have a lisp when he grows up.
weighing the pros and cons of these two items, and the fact that grady has first hand knowledge of having a tight frenulum, we decided to have a frenulectomy performed on graham. what sounds like a medieval procedure was actually quite simple and painless.
a topical numbing solution was applied to the under side of graham's tongue and after the medicine kicked in the doctor took a pair of scissors and simply snipped near the base of the bottom side of his tongue, loosening his frenulum immediately. graham made a little bit of a fuss, but that was more because he was having objects shoved into his mouth that weren't the type of objects he wanted!! after two minutes or so he was back to normal, sucking on his binky and asleep in his carrier!
it was amazing at how much more he could move his tongue afterwards. i could also tell a significant improvement in his breastfeeding effectiveness. hopefully this means he'll keep packing on the pounds!
all in all, we are glad we had the procedure done and that we won't have to worry about anything in the future.
