Ears tubes and tied tongues

We have discovered in Rylan's 5th month of life that he has a "tongue tie". The little skin thingy that attached the back of your tongue to the bottom of your mouth is the frenulum. Rylan's is grown almost to the tip of his tongue.  He has always had trouble eating whether bottle or breastfeeding, but the poor guy was called a weak sucker! When he began smiling and laughing on a daily basis, Rob and I noticed that the end of his tongue indents with the smiles. He doesn't stick his tongue out even though he looks like he wants to. So, we contacted our beloved in-family Speech Therapist: Aunt Tammy who gave us the positive tongue tie diagnosis.  If this were to go uncorrected Ry could have difficulty making certain sounds that require a "loose tongue" and have continued trouble swallowing.

Rylee-Roo has also had 5 ear infections and bouts of bronchiolitis since January. We have tried agressive inhaler therapy to "drain" the fluid out of his ear/nasal passages. After a few weeks of inhalers, I took Rylan to the 6 month Well Baby appointment and they saw more fluid in his ears, just waiting to infect the poor babe's ears. (May I just add that I was overwhelmed with happiness to go to the Well Child Clinic! We hadn't made it there yet, they've had to do his developmental checks at sick appt. cause he was getting sick so much.)

So, we were already scheduled for an Ear Nose and Throat doctor to discuss the tongue tie. He feels Rylan needs to have this cut surgically ASAP. He took a look at Ry's ears, saw the mini-swimming pool in there and decided he needed ear tubes as well. 

Rylan will have surgery at 7:30 am on June 15th. I work at the hospital he is having the surgery at, the Department Head of Anesthesiology to do his anesthesia (sometimes knowing certain people pays off) and I feel very good about the doctor he saw. I am hoping that I don't have a hard time the day of, but for right now, I feel very hopeful that we might get our little boy feeling good before long. Maybe the monthly infections will go away, maybe we can stop thickening his formula, maybe the albuterol updraft machine can be put up for more than a week at a time. Maybe.......

I tried to get in Rylan's mouth to take a pic of the tongue tie. You can't actually see the tongue tie, but you can see the effect it's having on his tongue.