In December 2015, Jennifer Melton gave birth to a healthy baby boy at the University Medical Center in Lebanon, Tennessee. Nate was only a day old when he was taken for a surgical procedure that he was never meant to have. 

Nate was in the hospital’s nursery when he was taken by a nurse for a frenectomy whereby the tissue that connects the tongue to the floor of the mouth was cut. This is a surgery that another child was meant to undergo to remediate his “tongue-tie.”

A frenectomy is a simple surgical procedure of the mouth that removes one or both of the frena (connective tissue membrane that attaches one surface of the mouth to another). A lingual frenum is a connective tissue that connects the tongue to the bottom of the mouth. This is the frenum that is removed when a child has a “tongue tie” that affects their ability to speak and/or feed properly.