Tongue Tied and Strawberry Faced

Or the one about health issues

When you’re old, you have to take a million pills to keep up your health. 

When you’re a baby - at least, when you’re our baby - you just have a million little health issues. 

The first we were told about with Lily was her tongue tie. It’s very common, with more than three million cases a year in the US. (Thanks, Google!) The tip of her tongue is (was) connected to the bottom of her mouth by an extended piece of skin. In fact, it’s (was) very pronounced on Lily - the skin really goes (went) all the way to the tip, which is unusual. Even more unusual is that this hasn’t prevented her from latching during breast feeding, which is the most common side effect. 

At our first pediatric visit, our pediatrician recommended Lily having a frenectomy, or having the tongue tie cut. She told us that some doctors use a laser to get rid of the tongue tie, but that would most likely not be covered by insurance. We would probably have to have it cut literally with a pair of scissors. That was pretty hard to swallow. I get that it’s a common procedure, but the idea of someone taking a pair of scissors to my baby’s mouth and cutting her skin… It wasn’t pleasant. She gave us the names of several oral surgeons, and Jon started to call around. It turned out that none of the names she gave us were in our network, so we found someone different.

We had to drive 45 minutes for our oral surgery appointment. They took a quick look at the issue before determining that it wasn’t too severe, especially since she can eat. Because of that, they recommended getting it done at 10 weeks. Not sure why that’s the “best time to have it done,“ but OK. Luckily, they balked at the idea of cutting with scissors. They said they haven’t done anything but laser in at least 10 years. And they implied that pediatricians often don’t know what they’re talking about.

A few weeks later, we got a bill for almost $200 for this 10 minute consultation. Jon called to find out if they had put it through insurance, which they said they had, but it had been denied. It was denied because, and I can’t make this up, Lily was apparently not on my insurance when we had the consultation when she was two weeks old. For those of you not well-versed in newborn insurance, babies are assumed to be covered by their mother’s policy for the first 30 days of life. In that time, parents have to bust their butts to sign the proper paperwork and get a birth certificate in order to get the baby actually signed up. We did all of that in time, but Lily’s first visit was when she was two weeks old, before we could even GET a birth certificate. 

This meant I had to call my insurance company to deal with something that should be basic policy. The poor guy I spoke to was really nice - he saw the denied claim in my file, and I ranted, in only a way that a woman scorned from NJ can, about how the baby should be on my policy by law, yada yada. “I was just about to say all of that,” the nice insurance man said. He said he’d resubmit the claim for me and it should be fine. 

Of course, I then had to call the oral surgeon again to update them on the whole process. The money we had been billed for was due before the insurance claim was likely to come through. The woman I spoke to there was actually amazing - sarcastic but empathetic, much like me. That also got squared away. 

The actual procedure was done recently (after I started writing this; hence the weird verb tenses. These entries are now taking about 2 weeks to actually get done!), and I was nervous about it. I know that Lily won’t remember it when she’s older and it’s best to get it done now. I was just concerned about the screaming and crying she would do. Jon and I both went into the room where the “surgery“ would happen, but I actually sat somewhere else for the procedure. I could still hear her loud scream when it was done, but thankfully it was short-lived. She has cried for far longer when she’s hungry. Also grateful that we weren’t asked to manually agitate the area frequently afterwards. Multiple friends of ours who had it done on their children said they had to do that for weeks, but this surgery group said she should be fine if we just keep her sucking on things. They were ridiculously nice. Everyone in the office fawned over Lily from the moment we walked in. I keep telling her to enjoy that now because people don’t think you’re this perfect for long!

Second minor issue. At her two week appointment with the pediatrician, Lily had a big red scratch on her head. It had shown up I believe the night before. The doctor asked if it was a scratch, and we all assumed it was. She said it might be a hemangioma, but we shouldn’t worry about that until we were sure. But, you know, keep an eye on it.

I visited my best frenemy, the Google, to find that a hemangioma is a very common strawberry birthmark that forms on a large number of infants. Usually they go away on their own. Once again, the pediatrician had me worrying over nothing. Yes, Lily has a big red birthmark in the middle of her for head (OK, that’s a bit dramatic - it’s a birthmark the size of have to thumb nail on my pinky), but I look at it as a way for her to be perfect through her imperfection. Most people don’t comment on it, although there are a few who do, which is like, why? Yes, thank you for pointing out the thing I can clearly see on my baby’s face. Some people do it to comfort us, saying their kids had them and they cleared up. But some are just like, “Oh, is that a birthmark?” 

No. It’s a zucchini. What do you think?

We recently had our two month visit, at which the pediatrician noted the hemangioma has gotten bigger. “We’ll keep and eye on it for now,” she said. “If it gets any bigger we might have to do a CT scan... Well, we’ll worry about that later.”

A CT scan?! Worry?! What the hell? I thought these hemangiomas were common! 

Just did a little more googling. A CT scan would be to determine if she has any internal hemangiomas. Although I also read external birthmarks are not usually indicative of internal ones, and internal ones are mostly left alone anyway. Sometimes they require surgery, but the occasion is rare. 

Listen. I’m all for vaccines and health and doing what the doctors recommend. But I’m starting to think that a decent percentage of what they do is partially because insurance will pay them for it, so they might as well make the bucks where they can. I guess I shouldn’t begrudge the safety precautions as long as I don’t have to pay for it... although in the long run, when overtesting forces insurance premiums up, we all do end up paying for it...

Okay. I’ll hit pause on that rant. That’s not what this is about. 

Besides, in the last few days, the birthmark has actually seemed to be shrinking already. 

*does her best not to worry about the minuscule chance that there are internal hemangiomas messing up my baby, despite all that self comforting I did above*