Perspective

~ Tomorrow I take my baby Bentley to the doctors for outpatient surgery. He has Ankyloglossia which is just a big word for Tongue-Tied. The membrane under his tongue (which attaches the tongue to the bottom of the mouth) reaches the tip of his tongue, so affects feeding, speech and oral hygiene. It restricts him from being able to stick the tip of his tongue to the top of his mouth, so he has a little bit of a difficult time with a spoon, he can't stick his tongue out very far, and when he finally gets teeth he would be unable to sweep his tongue around his teeth; and he would most likely have a little difficulty speaking. So...in order to avoid as much of these hardships as we can, we are going to have that membrane snipped so it will not be restrictive.

~ I have been very nervous about this, because since he is such a young child they have to give him local anesthesia to knock him out, because after they make the snip they will most likely have to put a stitch or two under his tongue to stop any bleeding, and they cannot very well stitch up a little tongue on a wiggly baby. He is only 7 months old and seems way too young to have to be knocked out, and all the possible bad things that can happen during anesthesia is scary to think about happening to a little guy. He's so little and innocent! I have been trying to calm myself since it really is minor "surgery" and will be over and done with within 20 minutes, but that fact has not helped calm me in the least bit.

~ What has helped me is putting this into perspective. A friend of mine had her baby 3 months early. Both are doing very well and her baby is growing and keeping strong, but he's constantly hooked up to monitors, and until he reaches 4 lbs no one can hold him. So at least with Bentley we can hold him before and after.

~ The second thing that has helped put this into perspective is what happened to my nephew Blake (from the Erickson clan). Last Wednesday he fell into a fire pit. We were camping, he was walking backwards to get closer to the fire and fell against the metal ring around the fire, and almost landed in the fire itself before my brother saved him. So he's suffering from 1st degree burns on his back and 2nd degree burns on one of his hands and the back of one of his legs. The poor little guy! So compared to the tragedy and hardship of that, the outpatient surgery shouldn't be too big of a deal - right?! I'll let ya'll know tomorrow.