In response to recent post:

Healing frenotomy will have a blobbing looking white area at the endpoint of
the incision (area closest to the tongue). It may appear red for awhile. The
lingual frenulum is poorly innervated and for the baby to have a sore mouth
would be unusual. the tongue moves the same whether on a finger or a breast,
and therefore doing finger exercises in the mouth is no big deal but may be
necessary to retrain tongue movements. I recommend starting tongue retraining
asap unless the particular baby is having particular problems. My dental
friends (Jon Pensyl and Greg Notestine) assure me that infection in the mouth
from surgery is NOT common and would be highly unusual at a frenotomy site.


I have worked with many, many frenotomized babies and have  NEVER seen an
infection at the frenotomy site, and quite a few required some retraining.
Keep fingers clean or wear gloves.

If a baby is having problems with infection, perhaps there is some other
explanation for it?

Cup feeding is one treatment modality. Finger-feeding is another. I have been
doing finger-feeding for many years and have use dit successfully without
addiction for most of those cases. However, the risk of addiction does exist.
I would hazard a guess that there is also risk of addiction to cup-feeding as
well. Neither method has been studied well. I think we need to use either
method judiciously and as the situation warrants.

What about rebirthing and lots of skin-to-skin?

Alison