I think i screwed up... does any one have any experiance of tongue tied babies and difficulties with solids?

[PinkTulips]

I've known ds2 is tongue tied since 1/2 weeks old.

I haven't brought him to a doctor about it though as at the time i (naively) thought only breastfeeding was really affected and although i wouldn't by any stretch of the imagination call him an easy baby to feed we've struggled through... mostly only because he's my third and i've picked up enough tricks over 3.5 years bf-ing the older two to cope with almost all the difficulties we've had and my nipples have been through hell and back already so the pain has been managable.

He's almost 25 weeks though and we've been attempting food for about a week and there are serious problems. He loves the tastes and clearly wants to eat but 95% of the food gets pushed back out of his mouth as he can't move it with his tongue and eat it.

We've tried a mix of blw and purree and with purree he seems to get a few dribbles down but still loses the vast majority, blw doesn't work at all.

From what i've read over the last day or so this is unlikely to improve and he may have speech delays too

He doesn't laugh much despite being a very happy smiley baby... he seems to silent laugh alot but doesn't make the noise and it sounds odd when he does. He dribbles constantly, really excessively to the point of having to have his top changed several times a day. He doesn't make any constonant noises at all... only soft AH OH EH type sounds. He seems cranky alot and is nursing constantly, he can't sleep for longer than an hour and a half atm.

Is it too late for it to be snipped? I'm bringing him to the gp on tuesday but have no idea what she's likely to do, if anything.

[CarGirl]

no it's not too late, my friends had their sons done when they weaned him for the exact same problem, kept pushing the spoon & food out his mouth!

[PinkTulips]

really? oh thank god.... i've been in tears all evening reading about all the problems he could have.

[PinkTulips]

shameless bump as i really could do with talking to someone who'd dealt with this..... the food issue is worrying.

i had planned on blw as it went so well with ds1 but that seems to be completely out of the question but as it stands he can't even manage purrees.

at what point does him not having solids become an issue?

[thisisyesterday]

hi pinktulips, my first 2 were both tongue tied, ds1 wasn't snipped, ds2 was.

it definitely is not too late to have the tie snipped, altohugh they may want to sedate him to do it at his age, but that's something you'd need to discuss with the GP.
in a mo i'll find you a list of peple who deal with tongue tie, in case te GP is useless you could chat with one of them

but my other thought is that the problems you are having are not necessarilydown to the tongue tie.
it is possible that he just hasn't lost his tongue thrust reflex, which is why he is pushing food out.
some babies do take a lot longer to get the hangof solids

the dribbling adn noises again are perfectly normal imo. ds1 was an incredibly dribby baby, just was. can't have been connected to the TT as he has grown out of it now lol
and my ds2 hardly made any noises at all, and still doesn't really talk at nearly 2 and he had his TT snipped, so again not necessarily linked to it. ditto the frequent nursing and crankiness, i really wouldn;'t necessarily put it down to the tongue tie.

there are children with severe tongue tie who go on to develop speech problems, but our local lady who snips TT says they never, ever do it as a precaution against this because in a lot of cases the tie will stretch or break anyway, and even if it doesn't there is no guarantee they'll have speech difficulties. they only snip if it is interefering with feeding.

[thisisyesterday]

oh and also, I am tongue tied and never had speech probs, neither did ds1 who still has his.
so please try not to worry too much.

list of tongue tie people

a lot of them need a referral from your GP or HV. but some of them you can self-refer.
i'd def recommend ringing the one nearest you and at least having a chat with them- they'll know all the answers!

[thisisyesterday]

sorry, this is the list

[PinkTulips]

thank you thisisyesterday

it's not that he's pushing it out so much as his tongue is pulled to the back of his mouth and the food just falls back out while he makes odd faces and looks confused.

i had presumed at first he just wasn't ready but i got to thinking today, i weaned dd early due to reflux (18 weeks) and looking back i know she wasn't really ready for it but even so she didn't lose all the food like he does. he can't drink out of a bottle or cup either, we've tried and he just doesn't know how to suck.

thank you so much for the advice though... i do realise i'm probably panicing and it's helpful to hear stories of people who've dealt with it. i think too much googling has made me a bit mental tbh

funnily enough i realised recently i'm mildly tongue tied too. my mother couldn't feed me and i was bottle fed due to failure to thrive but haven't had many long term effects other than a tendancy to trip over my words rather embarassingly

thanks for the list but we're in ireland, we've already decided to go private if the health service waiting list is ridiculous though as i want this sorted sooner rather than later.