Why Is My Child's Tongue Yellow?

It sounds gross and looks pretty gross too- but it is not as scary as it might seem!

For several months we have noticed that Bella's tongue was always a yellow/ orange color. We used to think it was what she was eating, but realized that it was never going away and actually seemed to be getting worse.

We thought about thrush, but she didn't have bad breath and she had no other signs of having an infection. She was totally healthy in that aspect. Don't get me wrong, I thought to myself several times "does my daughter have some flesh eating infection attacking her tongue?" It totally freaked me out some days. I mean, how many yellow tongues have you seen?

Luckily, we found out that mouth breathing is the culprit of Bella's yellow tongue! We knew that Bella was still breathing from her mouth most of the time, even though she has had surgery to correct the stenosis, but did not realize the extent of her mouth breathing. This confirms that the surgery was not as successful as we had hoped for...

You might ask, how does a person's tongue turn yellow from mouth breathing? Well, when a person uses their mouth to breath, it causes inflammation of the papillae. When the papillae is inflamed it appears a yellow/orange color and easily catches bacteria which can aid in the color change.

We know that mouth breathing is not ideal and can cause health problems over time. We are going to talk to Bella's ENT about this more in depth and try and figure out when it is the right time to do the second surgery to try and better correct her Pyriform Aperture Stenosis. We are aware that there is a possibility of more surgeries for her sinuses, adenoids and tonsils in the future, but we don't know if it is ideal to wait till then to repeat the corrective nasal passage surgery.

Bella snores a lot at night, she always has, and it has been considered 'acceptable' for her condition in the past, but now her doctors are concerned about what will happen once the adenoids start to grow into the already narrowed nasal passages. We have been asked to watch her sleep more closely and hope that we do not see increased distress over the next several months! I am still hoping that we do not have to do another sleep study for a while and that her adenoids don't cause much concern in the near future, but I know that we are very limited on space in there...

For now, we will enjoy Bella's yellow tongue, and cherish it as one of her special characteristics ;)