Dear Past Me: The Messy Truth About Having a Lip Tie Baby

Dear Sarah of exactly six months ago,

You're currently sitting on the undersized, aggressively cheerful yellow chair in Dr. Vance’s pediatric dental waiting room. It’s a Tuesday. You're wearing those black leggings that have a hole near the left knee, and you're having a completely silent, spiraling panic attack because four-year-old Maya still has a prominent gap in her front teeth. You're convinced—with the absolute, crushing certainty of maternal guilt—that this gap is entirely your fault because you didn't force her to get her lip tie lasered when she was an infant.

I know your heart is pounding right now while Maya aggressively manipulates a wooden bead maze in the corner. You're transported right back to 2019. You're remembering the cracked nipples, the agonizing 3 AM feeding sessions, and the endless, terrifying Google rabbit holes.

I'm writing this to tell you to take a deep breath, stop aggressively chewing on your thumbnail, and remember what we actually learned about the whole lip tie baby phenomenon. Because God, the internet is a terrifying place when you're running on two hours of sleep and your hormones are making you believe every catastrophic thing you read on a parenting forum.

The midnight Instagram medical degree

Let's rewind to when Maya was just three weeks old. Remember that specific sound she made when she tried to nurse? That awful, hollow smack-click-gulp noise? She sounded like a glitchy little e baby robot that needed its batteries changed, constantly breaking her suction on my chest and taking in massive gulps of air that would later turn into hours of screaming, inconsolable gas.

My nipples literally felt like they had been run through an industrial meat grinder. I remember sitting on the edge of our bed at 2:14 AM, wearing Dave’s oversized Syracuse hoodie that smelled vaguely of sour milk and desperation, violently typing things to watch for into my phone with one thumb while trying to balance a thrashing newborn on a nursing pillow.

Within ten minutes, the algorithm decided I was the prime demographic for pediatric dental trauma. Suddenly, my entire feed was flooded with high-definition videos of infant gums and aggressive lactivists telling me that if I didn't immediately book an outpatient laser surgery for my child's lip tie, she would never speak correctly, would develop severe sleep apnea, and would basically fail out of kindergarten. I had essentially diagnosed her with a rare anatomical disaster based on a three-minute TikTok video. Panic.

What our doctor actually said to my crying face

So, we hauled her into Dr. Aris's office. I remember looking completely unhinged, clutching my enormous iced coffee like a life preserver, aggressively telling him that my baby had a severe lip tie and we needed a referral for lasers immediately.

Dr. Aris, who has the patience of a literal saint, just kind of sighed and looked at her mouth. He told us that the AAP (which is like, the big boss of pediatricians) actually considers most of this tissue totally normal. He tried to explain that the little stringy piece of meat connecting the top lip to the gums—the labial frenulum or whatever it's called, which honestly sounds like a Harry Potter spell—is supposed to be there. I guess the tissue naturally recedes as they grow, or maybe the incoming teeth push it up and stretch it out? I barely passed high school biology, so I only understood about half of it, but basically, he told us that the medical world thinks the current obsession with routine lip tie surgery is wildly overblown.

I was so mad at him. I literally wanted to throw my coffee at his sensible shoes. I was like, my chest is bleeding and you're talking to me about normal infant anatomy! But he gently explained that function matters way more than how tucked-in or tight her top lip looks aesthetically. Anyhow, the point is, he refused to refer us to a surgeon until we spent a solid month working with a lactation consultant to try non-invasive physical adjustments first.

The surgery aftercare that made Dave turn pale

We did end up consulting with a pediatric dentist just to see what the surgery would entail, just in case. And oh hell, the aftercare.

The dentist calmly explained that the actual frenectomy procedure—snipping or lasering the tissue—takes like two seconds and is virtually painless. Great, sign me up, right? But then she mentioned the stretching. Because the mouth heals so incredibly fast, if you don't actively keep the wound open, the lip tie will just fuse right back together. Which means you, the already traumatized parent, have to pin your screaming infant down every four to six hours, day and night, for up to a month, and forcibly shove your fingers under their upper lip to rip the healing tissue apart.

Dave literally turned the color of old oatmeal. He once got lightheaded watching Leo get a splinter removed from his thumb. There was absolutely no way we were going to successfully manage to torture our baby around the clock without completely losing our minds. Apparently, dentists classify lip ties into four different numbered classes depending on how far down the gum the tissue attaches, but honestly, who gives a crap what diagnostic class it's when the treatment involves medieval torture stretching.

Shoving things around until it somewhat works

So we went the physical therapy and positioning route. You basically just have to contort your entire body into a human pretzel, wedge roughly seven pillows under your armpit for the dreaded "football hold," and then try to manually flip your baby's tiny upper lip outward like a fish while mashing your breast into their face at a forty-five-degree angle.

It was messy. It was frustrating. My neck ached for months. But slowly, as she grew and her mouth got bigger, it stopped hurting as much. The clicking faded.

But the real fun began when the teeth started coming in. Because of that tight upper lip pocket, milk would get trapped up there, irritating the gums just as the little white tooth buds were trying to erupt. Teething is already a nightmare, but when you combine it with a lip tie, their whole upper mouth becomes this inflamed, sensitive zone.

I bought so many things to try and help her. Most of them were garbage. But I'll say, the one thing that genuinely saved our sanity was the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy. I know I’m recommending a product right now, but I vividly remember sitting in a Target parking lot for forty minutes just letting her aggressively gnaw on the flat, textured back of this silicone panda's head because it was literally the only object thin enough to slip comfortably under her weirdly tight top lip. It provided just enough pressure to massage the trapped-milk gum area without making her scream. Plus, it's 100% food-grade silicone, so it didn't harbor weird bacteria in crevices, which is a huge deal when you're already paranoid about them getting cavities under that tied lip.

On the flip side, because I was desperate and buying everything off Instagram ads, I also got her the Bunny Silicone & Wood Teether. People absolutely rave about wooden teethers online. It’s super aesthetically pleasing, very minimalist-chic, and the organic wood is supposed to be amazing for sensory development. But honestly? It was just okay for us. Maya is... let's say, aggressively spirited. She mostly just used the heavy wooden ring part to thwack Dave directly in the collarbone when she was mad about her gums hurting. It's a beautiful teether if you've a gentle, delicate infant, but my kid was a menace. Stick to the flexible panda if your baby is a hitter.

If you're currently trapped under a nursing baby and just need a distraction from the pain, I highly suggest browsing Kianao's educational toys. We ended up getting those soft Gentle Baby Building Block Sets later on just so she'd have something brightly colored and squishy to play with that she couldn't concuss her father with.

So back to the dentist chair

Anyway, Sarah from six months ago, I need you to know how this dental appointment ends. Dr. Vance is going to walk into the waiting room, look at Maya's x-rays, and tell you that the gap in her front teeth is perfectly normal for a four-year-old. He’s going to explain that baby teeth are supposed to have gaps so the larger adult teeth have room to come in later.

He's going to tell you that her lip tie stretched out on its own, exactly like Dr. Aris said it probably would.

You didn't ruin her mouth. The guilt you're carrying right now is completely manufactured by an internet culture that thrives on making mothers feel like every anatomical quirk is an emergency that needs to be fixed. The milk leaked, you cried, you bought too many silicone pandas, but you survived it.

Give yourself some grace. And maybe, while you're still sitting there remembering the trench warfare of the newborn days, treat yourself to something nice from Kianao's baby essentials collection. Because parenting is hard enough without beating yourself up over a piece of skin.

Messy, late-night questions you're probably googling right now

Did we really need the surgery?

In our case, no. Dr. Aris was right—the tissue stretched as she got older and her mouth grew. Some babies absolutely do need the frenectomy if they're failing to gain weight or the mother is experiencing severe, non-healing tissue damage. But for us, repositioning and time fixed the issue. Don't let a Facebook group diagnose your kid; talk to an IBCLC and a doctor you seriously trust.

Why does my baby click when eating?

Because they can't flare their top lip out like a fish. The tight tissue physically tethers the lip to the gum, so instead of creating a nice vacuum seal around the breast or bottle, air sneaks in the sides. That's the clicking noise. It's annoying as hell, and it means they're swallowing air, which leads to the kind of gas that keeps you up until 4 AM.

How do you clean under a lip tie?

Very, very carefully. Because the lip is pinned down, breastmilk or formula pools in that little upper pocket and just sits there, which can cause early tooth decay when the teeth finally pop through. I basically had to wrap a clean, damp washcloth around my pinky finger and gently swipe it under her top lip twice a day. She hated it. I hated it. We survived.

Are wooden teethers bad for lip ties?

Not bad, just bulky. I found that the hard, thick wooden rings were just too wide to comfortably slide under Maya's tight upper lip when her front teeth were coming in. She got way more relief from thinner, flexible silicone teethers that she could maneuver herself.

Will a lip tie ruin my kid's adult teeth?

This was my entire panic attack in the waiting room! But according to Dr. Vance, usually not. Even if they've a gap in their baby teeth, the eruption of the adult teeth often tears or stretches the remaining frenulum naturally (which sounds gruesome but is apparently normal). Stop worrying about their adult teeth when they're three weeks old. Just focus on surviving the next feeding.