Watch out for Tongue Ties in babies

Posted On March 29, 2017

Hello everybody,

It’s very unfortunate when your baby has got a Tongue Tie and you are unaware about it for a longer period of time. If you don’t know anything about Tongue Tie then here is a brief illustration, so here you go, your baby has a tongue tie when the small skin of tissue called “frenulum”attached between the tongue to the floor of her mouth is too short so that it’s difficult to freely move the tongue around. It means Tongue tied children and adults develops speech difficulties, difficult in eating certain foods, etc. It can be diagnosed in the womb before birth, however is very difficult to spot. So, it is sometimes overlooked and not diagnosed until later.

My LO was only few weeks old when I was struggling to breastfeed her effortlessly. I thought, being a first time Mom, away from my family, I might not have known the correct way. Neither my midwife and Health visitor were worried because they too thought it’s every first time Mothers problem of not knowing how to correctly latch their newborns to their breast. They rather visited me often to teach me how to do it correctly, but my instincts were telling me something else. I used to breastfeed her for an hour or two and she doesn’t seem to get satisfied. I would cluster feed her at night-time which led to sleep deprivation and tired day times for me. If that was it I wouldn’t have complained, but there was other things that was bothering me day and night and that was a constant needle pined pain whenever she used to breastfeed. I was in so much pain, crying and shouting every time I feed her that I binge on boxes and boxes of chocolates to ease my pain day and night. My nipples were cracked, bleed, sore, even developed mastitis and engorged breasts, you name it, I got it all.

I was so stressed that sometimes I’d even thought of giving her bottle when she was not even a month old. Then I thought I should invest some money on breast pump so that I don’t have to suffer a lot and on the other hand she’d also get her mother’s milk. You know, if the breast pump would have been electric one, or let’s say, ‘expensive’ one then it would have worked smoothly but I got a manual one, which I have to constantly pump from my own “swollen” hands for hours and hours and even after all that hard work, I’d not even get 3 ounce of milk. However, I didn’t quit there and carry on for few days or so but she would not drink from a bottle. We tried to feed her from a bottle so many times but she would always turn it down and rather stay hungry.

That’s all the little challenges every mother would come across once they enter the phase of motherhood. Anyhow the real issue for me was the pain I was suffering. So, I went to the Health visitors and doctors who gave me few nipple creams which helped me a lot during those painful periods.

One day, the other teams of Health visitors visited for her routine check up when they spotted something wrong with her cry. They checked her tongue and found out the problem was none other than a Tongue Tie. When she told me about it, I was alien about it, so she explained me and educate me about the tongue tie. Only then the whole thing made a sense to me.

When your LO has a tongue tie, she wouldn’t latch properly to your nipple which makes your nipple crack and sore,
this results her not getting enough of your milk even fed for longer,
she would not gain required weight,
you develop mastitis, engorged breast due to her not feeding enough.

These are few indication if your LO have a tongue tie. It can be easily cured through a simple & quick surgery where the strip of the skin is cut by a specially trained nurses, midwives or doctors. They use some medicine to numb the area first and starts the procedure then after. It might be overwhelming to see your child in pain but don’t worry it’ll pass away soon.

After the surgery

The area where the Tongue Tie has been released, will appear little white or yellowish in color which is a healing process. No need to worry about it, it will be gone after few weeks.

Nonetheless, it is very slow learning process for your little one to latch correctly even after the surgery. It’s not that easy process because from birth she has been using the same old technique for breastfeeding so, you have to teach her to latch correctly. To learn about how to perfectly latch your baby, there are few classes that your midwife and health visitor would provide that you can visit or else create your own unique technique.

I created my own technique for her to open her mouth wide by creating a sound ‘Aahhh’ before feeding her. She would imitate me and do the same by opening her mouth wide by saying ‘aahh’ sound, which was very cute indeed. If she wouldn’t, I would nod my head to NO and she knew that I wouldn’t feed her (which is just my trick), that usually worked. It’s part of the exercise that you should carry out after the surgery. I don’t remember how long she took to improve her latching, but it was such a journey which I could never forget.

If you also found out similar indications of Tongue tie, act quickly so that you don’t have to go through what I’ve been through and your little one doesn’t have to suffer later in their lives. Enjoy breastfeeding and accept its ups and downs because you will cherish this moment later in your life.

♥Thank you♥