Tongue-Tie?

[skippingturtle]

I BF-ed my 20 week old DD for 3 weeks and it was SO painful. As she was in SCBU lots of HCPs checked the latch and pronounced it fine. I asked one nurse to check for tongue-tie as feeding was so painful. She said DD's tongue was fine.

I had had a tough delivery and was struggling to recover, and the pain of feeding was too much, so gave up.

DD is now at the age where she's putting everything in her mouth and licking things. I can now see her tongue is 'heart shaped' at the end, it has an indentation in it IYSWIM, like a rounded w. When I BF-ed I had lipstick shaped nippled and my areolas looked (and felt!) sort of sandpapered, IYSWIM (sorry if TMI!).

Did she perhaps have tongue-tie after all?

Oops, just realised the first sentence isn't very clear! I BF-ed her for the first three weeks of her life, not for three weeks when she was 20 weeks old!

Sounds like it - my ds had a tongue tie and the end of his tongue was quite heart shaped.

I think a lipstick shaped nipple means it wasn't far enough back in her mouth, so it got squashed against her hard palate.

Does it affect speech later on? If she's no longer BFeeding does it need to be fixed, do you know?

yes it does sound like a tongue tie

i don't know if it's the same everywhere, but in our area they won't snip it just in case of speech problems later. they'll only snip if it is affecting feeding

it can cause speech problems later, but it might not...

ds1 had an undiagnosed tie and he is nearly 6 now and speech is fine
ds2 had his snipped at 3 weeks due to feeding probs

Sounds like it - ds's tongue tie was noticed at 1 day old but was not snipped as it didn't affect me feeding him fortunately.

Now 14 mo, it doesn't appear to affect his 'normal' speech development i.e he is babbling and starting to say mamma, dadda etc just like his older sister did at this age - any future problems remain to be seen I guess.

The biggest issue we have with him is his constant dribbling which just seems to pour out of his mouth at times!

I had the opposite to thisisyesterday - my ds's tongue tie wasn't affecting his feeding but the midwife reffered us anyway. The doctor was very keen to cut it despite it not being a problem at the time. His argument was it can cause speech problems, and if it does then snipping a toddler's tongue is a much bigger deal requiring sedation/anaesthetic, whereas in a newborn it's a 2 minute job.

I'm seeing the HV soon, so will ask her to check. Perhaps I should have asked for a second opinion, but when the nurse said DDs tongue was fine I didn't push it.

Wonder if otherwise I might have made a success of breastfeeding.

I was quite shocked to find out how little training HVs/midwives actually have in breastfeeding - someone told me at most they do a 3 day course, but lots just get a few hours training on breastfeeding. Not suprising they can't spot problems.

I think I'm particularly peeved that I specifically asked someone to check DD's tongue and the nurse who did it (in SCBU) sort of laughed, had a look and said "no no, her mouth is perfect!".

My HV is great, although I'm not sure how much breastfeeding knowledge she has, as I'd pretty much stopped BF by the time I started with her.