Minnie has to have surgery...oh my!

Minnie has had a little, white ball under her tongue since she was born. Initially you couldn't see it much unless she yawned, but these days she's smiling like crazy and you can see it 90% of the time she's awake. Most people think it's a little tooth or something coming in, and Robert and I have gotten to the point that we just don't say anything when they spot it...mostly because we don't really know what it is to explain it to them. I asked the pediatrician pretty early on what it was and he said he thought it was a ranula, which is a mucous build-up under the tongue. Essentially, it's kind of like a little cist. He thought it might just go away on its own, but it hasn't. At her six-month appointment he suggested we go to a specialist to get it looked at. Well, we went today and the doctor told us that she'll need surgery to have it removed. Apparently one of the glands in her mouth did not finish developing before she was born and is not draining properly. Thus, it's all accumulating into this cist. He said that it could potentially rupture and get infected and so it's better to take care of it sooner than later, because once it gets infected things get exponentially more difficult.

Minnie will go in for surgery March 23. I know it's a very low key procedure but I am anxious as can be about it! Minnie is my world and it's just hard to think about anything happening to her. It's good to get it taken care of now, though, and the mouth heals very quickly so she won't have a long recovery. Sheesh, I was anxious before I had Minnie, but now I'm just out of control.

In the picture below you can get a pretty good look at the ranula. It does sort of look like a tooth, doesn't it?