How Lip & Tongue Ties Make Babies Fussy

When your baby is fussy, learning why is a tricky business. They could feel tired, hungry, achy, or something else. To cover all your bases, make sure to consider oral health as a potential reason. Often enough, lip and tongue ties cause colic. That means your infant may need treatment from a qualified dentist. If you’d like, your local Levittown dental practice can explain further. Here’s a primer on lip and tongue ties, how they cause colic, and why a pediatric dentist should treat them.

What Exactly are Lip & Tongue Ties?

Rather than a result of lifestyle, some oral problems occur at or before birth. Lip and tongue ties fall into this second camp.

Essentially, a lip tie is when the upper lip’s connective tissue attaches to the gums. It’s caused by the presence of soft tissues that normally recede during pregnancy. When these materials persist, they can prevent proper lip movement.

Meanwhile, a tongue tie occurs when tissue tethers your tongue’s tip to your mouth’s floor. As that happens, the affected person may struggle to stick out their tongue.

Why Do They Make Babies Fussy?

The reason lip and tongue ties cause colic is simple: These problems can keep an infant from breastfeeding well. In doing so, they’ll make your baby quite distressed.

To be more specific, babies with lip and tongue ties can struggle to latch. This difficulty then leads to poor feeding, as infants will take excess air into their bodies. The typical effect of this process is painful bloating and crying.

Lip and tongue ties also contribute to reflux symptoms. The extra air caused by a poor latch can push acidic stomach contents up the throat. From there, the child will suffer issues like heartburn and worse.

How Should You Solve the Problem?

As luck would have it, lip and tongue ties are quite solvable. All it takes is treatment from a qualified pediatric dentist.

For example, dentists can fix a lip tie with a frenectomy. This option uses a dental laser to cut the skin between the lip and the gums. Even better, the procedure is painless – the team will numb your child’s mouth to ensure this fact.

A tongue tie, meanwhile, could be treated by a frenotomy. This choice snips away the frenulum – the tissue band connecting your tongue tip and mouth floor. As a result, your infant would have greater suction power which allows them to breastfeed more effectively.

Indeed, lip and tongue ties cause colic. That said, don’t worry too much – your local dentist can easily address them. So, talk to your dental provider about treatment today.

About the Author

Dr. Amar Singh is a board-certified pediatric dentist in Levittown, PA, having earned his dental doctorate at the Howard University College of Dentistry. He’s also a member of the American Dental Association and the Pennsylvania Dental Association. Given this background, his specialties are dental checkups, lip and tongue tie treatments, emergency kid’s dentistry, and restoration work. Dr. Singh currently practices at Happy Teeth of Levittown and is reachable on his website and by phone at (267)-580-9657.