I think I stated to post something about young master Reid's frenulum, but I dropped it, sometime last week. Last week was rough, with work crashing into baby-raising, but we're recharged after the weekend, ready, at least for today, to think coherently and take on the world at large.

So the frenulum. This is the small flap of skin that, apparently, links my son's tongue to the floor of his mouth. Most people's frenulums are anchored conveniently far back to allow us all to do the things we like to do with our tongues. One of those first things may have been breastfeeding, and that's where little Reid has run into some obstacles. (You can read about short frenulums here.) Tomorrow, we're heading into an ear-nose-throat doctor to have the little guy snipped.

It isn't vascular and it doesn't have nerves, so no worries about that. There is some kind of brewing controversy about it, which I thought was pretty funny. Apparently, this condition is also known as "tongue-tied" and I myself have a pretty robust frenulum, which I've only noted prohibits me from extending my tongue to Gene Simmons levels of lewdness. This has not been a big problem.

It turns out that some kids with short frenulums in fact breast feed fine, while others have a tendency to get tired, break the latch with the breast and bring a whole load of crankiness to bear when feeding with the short frenulum. Reid appears to fall in the latter camp, with feedings sometimes going great and other times becoming huge three-ring circuses of sleep, slurp and shout.

Therefore we are here, talking about short frenulums. You can read about how they passed from favor some time in the past over here, but you may want to skim over the part about how the midwives once kept a long, sharpened nail to slice right through them after a baby was born (shudder).

So tomorrow, frenulum snipped, and hopefully, smooth breastfeeding ahead.