How I Nursed A Baby with Tongue and Lip Ties

Tongue and lip ties. If you had asked me what I thought about those before my first baby was born I would have told you absolutely nothing! Little did I know that tongue and lip ties would play such a huge role in my life as a mama.

Our Experience with Lip and Tongue Ties

Both of my babies have been tongue tied. My oldest daughter had a Class 1 tie. That just means that the tongue was obviously attached. The tissue that pulled at her tongue was clear when she opened her mouth to cry and pulled her tongue into a heart shape.

Thank goodness for a sweet nursery nurse who spotted it. She wouldn’t latch immediately after birth at all, the pediatrician clipped it about 30 minutes after birth and she nursed happily for the next 15 months.

Fast forward about 20 months later, and our next daughter was born. We were already on the lookout for a tie, so when she was born, the nurses all looked at her mouth. “No ties!” they announced, and I was so relieved.

My relief was short lived because she too wouldn’t latch. We spend the next two nights in the hospital with a screaming baby, and doctors and lactation consultants who told us repeatedly there were no ties, and that she was just learning how to nurse.

I knew something wasn’t right, but I was so exhausted that I just kept trying and trying for months before getting another opinion.

More answers about our tongue and lip ties…

At her 2 month appointment, I came in and had a new lactation consultant look at her mouth because I was convinced that she had a posterior tongue tie.

A posterior tongue tie is just another type of tie that isn’t as obvious, but is just as detrimental to a baby’s ability to suck.

The lactation consultant looked in her mouth and said that she didn’t have a tongue tie, but she had a very severe lip tie.

I felt a little bit of relief because I knew from my own research, that lip ties are almost always accompanied by a posterior tongue tie. I felt like there were finally answers and possibly some relief in sight!

We immediately booked an appointment with an oral surgeon for the following day.

Finally some help with our tongue tied baby

The oral surgeon confirmed that she had a very severe lip tie and wanted to try to release just the lip tie and only do the tongue tie if we didn’t see enough improvement.

In hindsight, I wish I had just pushed for them to correct both the tongue and lip that day instead of waiting the month in between like we did.

After her lip was released, her latch was a little bit better. She would stay latched for longer with a slightly stronger suck and wouldn’t scream as much when it was time for her to nurse.

It wasn’t until after we had her tongue released about a month later that I saw the most improvement. However, it was not a magic fix and nursing her was still very very difficult.

The signs I had that my baby was tongue and lip tied.

• Inability to latch after she was born. She would just scream and scream until we could coax her onto the breast. Even then, she would oftentimes pop right off and resume screaming. This would continue for about an hour every time she needed to eat.
• Extremely weak suck. When she would be latched, the suck was very weak. In the same way, she wouldn’t suck on your finger or a pacifier.
• Will not take/hold on to a pacifier. Pacifiers would just fall right out of her mouth. She would try to suck on it for a second, but it was too difficult. We tried every single kind of pacifier sold on Amazon and at Walmart.
• Trouble sleeping. From day 1, she could not eat effectively so she could not sleep effectively. When she would nurse, she would swallow a lot of air so it gave her reflux like symptoms. She would not sleep for longer than 10 minutes without being held or in a Solly wrap for the first 5-6 months of her life.
• Clicking while nursing. To this day (even after having her tongue and lip ties released), when she nurses, she makes a clicking noise. This is a sign of a tie and a poor latch.
• Fear of the breast and bottle. Because of her ties, she could not eat effectively and associated eating with pain. Therefore, she would scream and fight eating despite being extremely hungry for hours upon hours.
• Extremely long nursing sessions. Our nursing sessions would last at least 45 minutes, sometimes longer for the first 4-6 months of her life. She was just not an efficient sucker, so she could not drink quickly at all.

If you’re experiencing any of these things with your baby, PLEASE make an appointment with an experienced lactation consultant, pediatric dentist or oral surgeon.

Someone with lots of experience in the area of infant lip and tongue ties will be able to help you figure out if this is what is happening with your baby. Don’t settle for on pediatricians opinion. You know if something isn’t right. Seek out the answers you need!

There are a few things that helped me to nurse my baby with tongue and lip ties.

Nursing a baby with tongue and lip ties is not an easy feat. It is incredibly difficult and involved me shedding lots and lots of tears along the way. However, there are a few things that I learned that helped me make it through this very difficult time.

Bounce baby while walking around to get them to latch.

In order to get my daughter to latch to nurse, I had to bounce her in my arms while walking around the room. After 5-10 minutes, she would latch and settle into a good groove.