Sunshine Coast Tongue Tie Release
Wattle Street Dental are a Sunshine Coast dental clinic offering a range of specialist services including tongue and lip tie release (frenectomy) treatment for adults, children and infants.
Tongue tie in children and infants can cause eating, sleeping, behavioural and speech development problems as well as jaw development and muscle issues.
If left untreated, the issues can lead to many dental issues such as malocclusion (poorly positioned teeth) and tooth decay, It may also lead to airways issues such as sleep apnoea in adults.
If you would like to learn more about tongue ties and how yours could be effecting your overall health, please book a consultation with Wattle Street Dental Cooroy – call 07 54477669.
Why Release mine, my child’s or my baby’s Tongue Tie?
Tongue tie problems resulting in poor jaw structure and teeth alignment are usually identified quite early on, but adults may find themselves suffering from back, neck and shoulder pain, headaches/ migraines or sleep apnoea when their tongue isn’t able to be placed in the right spot. If you have a short restricted tongue tie,(frenulum), your tongue may not be able to be comfortably placed loosely behind your top row of teeth, against the palate which can lead to such issues.
Tongue Tie treatment can aid in the relief/resolution of some of the following issues:
- Low tongue posture
- Swallowing problems
- Speech difficulties and lisping
- Sleep apnoea and mouth breathing
- Dribbling
- Feeding issues
- Postural issues
- Reflux
Infancy and Breastfeeding with a tongue tie:
Some mothers manage to cope with some or all of the issues that surround their infants oral restrictions by compensation. This can be done through postural and positional changes or simply by pushing past the pain and just dealing with it.
These ways of compensating aren’t ideal and impact greatly on the success of your breastfeeding journey. Compensating for poor function of the tongue and even lip may not last the entirety of your breastfeeding journey. You may find these compensatory behaviours may not get you past the first few months.
Once breast-milk is purely demand driven instead of hormone driven, you and your baby may struggle to reach weight gaining recommendations, your supply may drop and you could struggle to meet the feeding needs of your baby.
Some common Signs of Infant Tongue/Lip tie include
- Poor latch/inability to latch
- Sliding off the nipple
- Fatigue during feeds
- Irritability while feeding
- Poor weight gain
- Clicking during a feed
- Dribbling milk at the breast/ bottle
- Digestive issues (such as increased gassiness, reflux, colic, vomiting, distended stomach)
- Maternal nipple pain/ damage (feels like the infant is compressing, chewing, gumming, pinching the nipple)
- Increased maternal nipple/ breast infection
- Compromised maternal milk supply
Tongue ties don’t just stop at infancy, It isn’t something you just ‘grow’ out of. There are lifelong issues that can be a result of oral restrictions well beyond infancy and breastfeeding. Which means early intervention is preferred if it can be diagnosed early on into life.
Compensation habits during breastfeeding set up bad habits for life, they can all manifest into other issues across your child’s life. It’s extremely important to establish good function of the tongue as early as possible. ‘Just getting by’ or ‘Managing’ is not ideal for the long term function and habits of your child.
Tongue Tie In Adults And Children:
As with infancy tongue ties come with various implications. In children you may see predominant mouth breathing, sleep disordered breathing, speech impediments, behavioural issues and dental problems. These issues then follow on into adulthood causing other issues such as frequent headaches/ migraines, digestive issues, sleep apnoea, back, neck and shoulder pains and TMJ issues due to poor dental alignment.
It’s important to note that tongue tie releases aren’t for everyone, and getting it done on a whim won’t guarantee results. We’ll go through a thorough consultation with you asking many questions that may seem irrelevant to the mouth but are very common symptoms of tongue restriction, we will look at how your jaw sits and discuss any sleep apnoea or breathing issues before we conclude whether a tongue tie treatment would result in improvements for you. Before a tongue tie release, we’ll require you to do some short 5-minute tongue exercises twice a day to ensure your tongue has adequate strength to move your tongue around correctly after the surgery and that the frenum doesn’t re-attach with restriction.
Is it Painful?
Tongue tie release procedures are much less painful than they used to be. Rather than simply cutting the tie with scissors or a scalpel like it used to be done, we perform tongue tie removal using laser techniques (Waterlase). This minimises any swelling and bleeding, thus reducing pain and recovery time, all while being much safer than the traditional technique. Tongue tie release will not be pain free, it will be uncomfortable to some degree after the numbness wears off, but most of our patients report a two or three on a 1-10 pain scale, with the pain completely gone within a couple days.
As for babies and children under 3, numbing would not be given. The procedure would be only a minute or two, and would allow for the infants to be able to feed immediately after the treatment settling them and calming them down.
Nervous Patients:
It’s not uncommon for some patients to have a fear of going to the dentist, especially if they haven’t been in a while. We understand this and we do our best to make a comfortable environment that you want to return to. We’ll do everything we can to get your mind off the procedure, including stopping for breaks, ceiling-mounted TV, essential oils or just having a friendly chit chat while we do what’s necessary.
Any surgical or invasive procedure carries risks. Before proceeding, you should seek a second opinion from an appropriately qualified health practitioner.
Tongue Tie Release Treatment Sunshine Coast
Book an appointment at our Sunshine Coast dental clinic to discuss our range of tongue tie release treatment options. Call 07 54477669.