If you would have told me anything about a tongue tie before I had babies, I would have just assumed you were talking about the figure of speech. Oh, how becoming a mama changes things!
When Rosy was born, she was tongue tied and the nurse from the nursery caught it when she wouldn’t latch in the first couple of minutes after birth. We lived in Mississippi at the time, and apparently (thank goodness!) it is common practice to take care of any ties in the hospital. They took her to the pediatrician on call, he clipped it, and she nursed wonderfully for the next 15 months.
Knowing that Rosy had a tongue tie, and I was delivering Lucy in Kentucky and didn’t know if they had the same practices, I was adamant about asking our pediatrician about it before and right after birth. As soon as she was born, a nurse said there wasn’t a tongue tie.
Great! I thought. They brought her to me, and it was just like Rosy had been prior to getting hers released. Lucy wouldn’t nurse. Finally, she latched and nursed for a little while, but we had screaming matches the entire time she was in the hospital just trying to get her to latch. It was terrible.
I asked every pediatrician that looked at her to examine her for tongue tie. They all said she was good to go. No tie.
When we got home from the hospital, the screaming continued. She was SO hungry but didn’t want to latch. When she did latch, it was a super weak suck and it felt like she would suck for 10 times before she would swallow. I knew something wasn’t right.
I called the hospital nursery and talked to the lactation consultant. She cut me off and said that if I wasn’t sore, then there wasn’t a tie. She also said it was normal that she was screaming while attempting to nurse, wasn’t sleeping at all and that we couldn’t lay her down flat.
In my sleep depravity and utter exhaustion from a difficult delivery, I took everyone at their word. They were the professionals, right. I had only had one baby before, maybe this is normal and I had just been blessed with a baby that ate really well the first time.
Four weeks later, and I absolutely knew that something was not right.
I had given us both time to “settle” in, and things were just getting worse. The screaming while eating and inability to sleep were not normal and I knew it.
By this point, my milk was CRAZY. I was hyper-lactating to compensate for Lucy’s inability to suck efficiently and we were both literally drowning in milk. Which I now know is what probably jumpstarted her silent reflux symptoms.
At 6 weeks, I finally called a friend from Mississippi who is a lactation consultant. I told her everything that was going on with Lucy and she told me that there was most certainly a tie.
I felt so relieved.
There was something wrong! I wasn’t crazy like I had been told by everyone I had taken my concerns to here. But, I definitely wasn’t through the hurdle yet.
I scheduled an appointment with our pediatrician to get them to look at her mouth again for ties. This visit was a train wreck. The lactation consultant in their office wanted to see Lucy nurse, but she would not latch. Instead she screamed her head off the entire hour we were in the office.
They looked at her mouth and said “Oh, yes there is a lip tie.” I was dumbfounded. I had been asking about ties since before Lucy was even born, and finally at 2 months they spot something that COULD help us. They didn’t see the tongue tie, but they said that we could possibly get a referral to an ENT in a couple of months.
This was not going to do. I left the office and immediately called an oral surgeon in town to see if they could look at her.
They got us in the next day.
When they looked at Lucy, they said she had a very severe lip tie and would try releasing that first and if it helped enough, they wouldn’t touch her tongue.
We came home, and to my amazement, she nursed just a little bit better. It wasn’t night and day by any means, but maybe 10% better than she did before the revision, which was huge for us.
We gave her about 3 weeks to adjust to the lip tie revision, and I still felt like her suction wasn’t as strong as it should be. We took her back in and they released her posterior tongue tie.
After the posterior tongue tie was released we started a long road to improvement.
There was no miracle after the tiny surgery, but when we got home she nursed just a tiny bit better. The next day, her suction was even a little stronger.
Things continued to improve over the next month. Her clicking while nursing started to go away, and she was swallowing with almost every suck instead of every 10.
I still had an oversupply of milk and an incredibly forceful letdown due to her not being able to effectively empty the breast her entire life. This was another issue we had to deal with over the next few months with the reflux.
Now, Lucy is 7.5 months old and nurses like a champion.
The road to get here was incredibly hard. Honestly, if she would have been able to latch onto a bottle, I probably would have given up. But I am so thankful that we persevered.
What a joy it is to nurse my baby without her screaming and pulling away.
Something that this experience taught me is that you have to listen to your gut when it comes to your babies.
No doctor or consultant knows your baby better than you do. If you think something is wrong, it probably is. Don’t stop looking until you have someone listen to you and help.
If you think your baby has a tongue or lip tie, take them to a specialist to be evaluated. Oral surgeons and pediatric dentists do this all day long, they really know what they’re looking at!
Stick to it, if you can. I’m so thankful that I didn’t give up nursing Lucy. It was SO hard, but we made it through together and I wouldn’t trade her looking up at me smiling while she eats now for anything.