Joshua & I had to wake up super early yesterday morning.  He had a sublingual frenulectomy for his ankyloglossia.  In layman’s terms, he was a little tongue-tied & got the little tissue holding his tongue down clipped.  So now, Joshua can stick his tongue out normally.  Before, he couldn’t really get it out all the way.  This is a common thing which is usually fixed in the first few days of life, but since he had other issues to correct that were slightly more important (such as needing bypass surgery…), we couldn’t take care of it then.  The ENTs said we should wait until Joshua was older so that he could better tolerate going under general anesthesia.

After 2 1/2 hours of pre-op work-up the day before, he got the A-OK for the surgery.  Because this is a relatively minor procedure, they often do it at outpatient clinics but they (& I) preferred to have it done at the hospital because of Joshua’s history making him at a slightly higher risk.  We had to check in at 5:00am at Walter Reed.  That meant that I had to wake up at 3:30–ugh!  Erick was sweet & made pancakes for me.  He wanted to go with us but it was his last day of class in prep for his family medicine clerkship so he was just ‘on call’ in case we needed him to come.  We got Joshua up at the last minute & put him straight into the car.  He went in his pajamas in the hope that he would just go right back to sleep on the drive (he didn’t).

After getting into his hospital pj’s & slipper socks, he ran around in the hallway with another little boy waiting for surgery, Frankie.  The 2 boys had fun playing together which helped pass the time since we pretty much just waiting around until we were taken to the pre-op room around 7:30 (good thing we were there at 5, to wait for over 2 hours—it’s not like we had better things to do such as sleep in…).  The docs gave Josh some Versed to help him relax before they took him away but it didn’t really do much for him.  They said he would get pretty floppy but that didn’t happen & others kept coming up to us & asked if we gave it to him.  They seemed surprised when I said he took it since he was still so hyper.  When I sat him on the crib, he tried to stand up but couldn’t, so that’s how we knew it was taking effect.  He looked like a drunk baby since he couldn’t even stand up but kept trying.  The med student & I were laughing which caused Josh to laugh as well.

I wasn’t even in the waiting room for 1/2 hour when the surgeon came to tell me he was done.  The actual ’surgery’ part was less than a minute but it took a little while for the anesthesiologist to put him under & give him an IV.  Everything went as well as expected.  He didn’t bleed at all so he didn’t even need any stiches!  I met Josh in the PACU where he was sleeping & snoring.  After awhile, we woke him up & he was nursing about 5 minutes later with absolutely no symptoms of any problems.  The only thing that seemed to bother Josh was the IV in his ankle & the oxygen saturation monitor on his toe.  Less than an hour after that, we were discharged, only to wait downstairs in the pharmacy for another hour to pick up his d/c meds.

Joshua has been a little more cranky than usual but he’s doing great.  No problems eating, sleeping, nursing, or anything.  He’s even chewing on all his toys.  There were no post-op restrictions other than the surgeon advising me not to encourage him to stick out his tongue for a few days.  If he does it on his own, that’s fine, but he just didn’t want him doing it too often yet.  It was so cute to see Joshua actually be able to stick his tongue out all the way—what a cutie!