Dealing With Tongue-Tie (Again)

Charlie is not even two weeks old and he was diagnosed with having a Tongue-tie (ankyloglossia) a couple of days ago. For those not familiar with tongue-tie, it is a problem affecting some babies with a tight piece of skin between the underside of their tongue and the floor of their mouth (lingual frenulum).

My first son Theodore had it bad, he had a severe tie at the front of his tongue which made it almost impossible for him to breast-feed. We knew that when Charlie was born he could have it and it has transpired that history has repeated it's self as Charlie is not latching on, thus making it very difficult to breast-feed despite our and the midwives best efforts.

When Ted had tongue-tie he had a frenulum tie which was easy to correct, it was a trip to the hospital and team simply-cut the skin to release the tongue. In Charlie's case it is a little more complicated, he has a posterior tie which cannot be corrected easily, to our dismay.

Charlie's tie limits his tongues movement, the consultant had to snip the tie at the back of his mouth (Which is a more complex cut than Teds). The procedure took two minutes, there was a little blood and the baby was a little distressed as he had to have a nursers finger in his mouth holding his tongue back for a good five minutes.

The cut has a 50/50 percent chance of helping him latch-on. Since he has had the procedure he has feed a little better, but not as well as we would have liked. Unlike Ted's cut we have to now continue to push back Charlie's tongue twice a day to ensure the cut skin does not re-heal - this is not really a nice thing to have to do to a newborn considering that these exercises can cause it to bleed.

Should his feeding not get any better we do have the opportunity to go back and have the tie looked at again, however we think that in the coming days if he cannot latch-on we will continue to use a mix of expressed milk and formula.