A baby over in the U.S. was born with such a large tongue that she had to be assisted with breathing apparatus for the first week of her life to stop her choking.

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Luckily now she has had surgery to bring her tongue back to normal size, but for a while there things were not looking good. The rare condition, called Beckwith Wiedemann Syndrome, caused Paisley Morrison-Johnson’s tongue to grow more than twice the size of her mouth. BWS affects one in every 11,000 births worldwide.

Apparently the size of the tongue even shocked doctors who said that it was the largest that they had ever seen. She even had to be fed via a gastronomy tube until she was six months old when she could finally have the surgery. Her parents, Madison Kienow, 21, and Shannon Morrison-Johnson, 23, hoped that she would just grow into it, but it never happened. Since the surgery, which removed more than six inches of the muscle, Paisley has even smiled for the first time.

Mum-of-two Madison, a pre-medical student, said:

Her tongue filled up her whole mouth, it was very thick and protruding out of her mouth.

It looked like she had an adult’s size tongue inside the mouth of a baby.

Her tongue was constantly sticking out, she was always chewing on her tongue because it took up so much room in her mouth.

When she was born, it was so enlarged that doctors worried it was going to affect her airways and cause her to suffocate.

Doctors told us she had one of the largest tongues they had ever seen and that the sooner she had reduction surgery the better.

But after her first surgery it looked like her tongue had grown back to its original size and was really bothering us.

During her second reduction surgery a massive amount of her tongue was removed and thankfully now it goes completely into her mouth.

Since recovering she smiled for the very first time, I couldn’t believe it and was shocked by how beautiful my little girl looked.

Being able to see her smile is absolutely huge for us and now she’s not even having difficulties eating which is a massive relief.

She’s like a completely new baby – her facial features look different, she smiles a lot and she has even getting close to saying her first words.

Ah, that might just be the feel good story of the day. What a weird condition though, I’d never heard of that before. You learn something new everyday right?

For more on newborn conditions, check out this baby that came out looking like an 80-year-old.