Before and After Tongue Reduction - More Pictures

In the last post with pictures from before and after the surgery to reduce the size of Micaelyn's tongue I purposely chose pictures with a more natural expression to show the difference in her "normal" expression.  As you can see from the pictures the change was quite dramatic, but it was also amazing to see how even her smile changed.  Before the surgery Micaelyn's smile was very open-mouthed, all tongue.  Even when smiling you didn't see her teeth.  After the surgery her smile completely changed.  Although she was adorable before the surgery, it was great to see the visible changes that resulted from the surgery giving her a more normal appearance.  We are especially glad we got this done before she started school so she never had to deal with kids making fun of her for her enlarged tongue.

Here are a bunch of pictures to illustrate the change.  You can see from the pictures before the surgery how open-mouthed her smile was and that you never saw her teeth because her tongue was too big.

Although Micaelyn was intubated for several days after surgery and after that she was in too much pain to feel much like smiling it was obvious even before we left the hospital that her smile had changed.  She had never been able to smile with her mouth closed before so it was amazing to see her sweet smile with her mouth closed.  Because smiling with her mouth closed was such a big deal we still have to remind her sometimes that it's okay to show her teeth when smiling for the camera.  We love the fact that her teeth are actually visible now!  Although it has been a couple of years now since her surgery I've decided to post only pictures that were taken within a couple of months of the surgery to illustrate how significant the change was without any differences related to changes as she grew.  You can see from the pictures how after surgery she could not only smile beautifully with her mouth closed but also that when she had a big smile her teeth were completely visible as opposed to the smile she had before surgery in which her enlarged tongue filled her mouth to the point where even with her mouth open wide you couldn't see her teeth.