"Hi I'm Brittany, I'm one of Dr. Reese's assistants here at Indianapolis Dentistry.
I have Hadley here with me. She is 7 weeks old. We did a frenuloplasty and a tongue tie procedure two weeks ago. What Dr. Reese did was to take a look at her the day before and noticed that her tongue was tied and also her lip was pretty far down on her gum line.
Dr. Reese recommended that since we were doing the tongue tie that we go ahead and do the lip tie as well. We did that on a Thursday.
We see a lot of patients that we do the procedures on where the mom will hold the baby and then we have the assistants help out with everything else.
It's a very effective procedure for breastfeeding. There are moms who have trouble with babies latching on or even pain sometimes with breastfeeding and they don't know it, but tongue ties or lip ties can be the problem. They don't talk about it in classes or they don't mention it in the lactation department. Pediatricians might mention it to get it clipped there at the office, but the laser (I feel like) is a lot better procedure. There is:
- less bleeding
- faster healing time
- better overall for the baby
We do see a lot of patients. The youngest we've seen is a 2-week old and we've even seen a 2-year old. Obviously the babies are easier to work with, but we do see a lot of babies and I definitely do recommend it for breastfeeding moms to definitely take a look at it after the baby is born and find out if they have a lip or tongue tie. If you don't know what it is, you can always have the nurses or your pediatrician check it in the hospital or at their follow-up appointment."