Twins Speech

Cannon and Cruiz have been slow talkers from the beginning, and once they began talking, they conversed in twin talk, which sounds like gibberish to the rest of us.

At appointments with different pediatricians, I would ask about their speech and would always be assured they were fine, and told it’s just twin talk. But I recently began feeling that their limited speech was affecting them in more ways than one and felt they needed help in the area. So I scheduled the boys for a speech evaluation. The first step was to check their vision and hearing. Cruiz passed both with flying colors, (He had tubes placed at 11 months) Cannon passed the vision test, but barely passed his hearing, they noticed there was one frequency he wasn’t responding too. We were then referred to an ENT, where we learned Cannon needed tubes put in his ears, and both boys were tongue tied! (I had never heard of this). Tongue-tie means they have an unusually short band of tissue tethers the bottom of the tongue's tip to the floor of the mouth. When he asked the boys to put their tongue to the top of their mouth, they couldn’t, their tongue just twisted. So surgery was scheduled to place tubes in Cannon’s ears, take Cruiz’s tubes out, and clip both of their tongues.

We arrived at Primary Children’s Hospital at 6:30 am. The boys were so sweet, and had everyone loving the fact they were identical twins. A couple hours later, Cannon was taken back, and thirty minutes later, Cruiz was taken to have the procedure done.

Cannon, Cruiz

I love their different personalities. Cannon chose to be taken back in a car and a candy cane smell in his mask, and Cruiz chose a wagon and banana smell.

Cannon woke up hysterical. He was angry and began thrashing, and literally cried for an hour. He would rarely talk, but kept pointing to his mouth. Poor little guy.

 

We were nervous for Cruiz to wake up across the hall, two hysterical toddlers seemed overwhelming, but to our surprise, he woke up with the biggest smile on his face. He was as happy as could be the entire time, laid with his hands behind his head, enjoyed a show while his dad fed him a slushie.

It has now been a few weeks since the procedure and we’ve been surprised how quickly it has helped the boys with their speech. They both had 4-5 dissolvable stitches under their tongue, and Cannon’s tongue tie was quite a bit worse. The first couple of days they drooled a little bit, and spoke like they had a numb mouth, but after that they’ve been fine. When we saw family at Christmas, they commented on how much better they could understand them, especially Cruiz.

I’m so happy I listened to my gut, here’s to hoping we get these two talking better quickly!