Tongue tie reattached or growth spurt?

[CityDweller]

My 14 wo is ebf, having worked our way thru various early challenges, which were eventually attributed to tongue tie, which was snipped at 5 wks and then re-done at 7 wks cos it had reattached.

Since then things have mostly gone well, bar the odd fussy period around things like vaccinations. Over the past few days it feels like things have started going wrong again. Baby is often fussy at feeds (pulls on and off, cries) and I've been getting a bit of nipple pain and it feels like she's not doing a deep latch as nipples aren't coming out particularly elongated and can be a bit misshapen. She also often seems to lose suction. And she's dribbling a lot and has a lot of spit bubbles.

However, I also think she's going through a big growth / developmental spurt as she's working on new skills and has gone from sleeping 8pm-5am to waking in night to feed and daytime naps are even more of a battle than usual. And she's a bit grumpy/ mood-swingy in general.

Could her tt be reforming (again) or is this just a spurt I need to ride out?? I just feel so despondent and I thought things were meant to get easier after 12 wks, but in my case I feel they've got worse (sleep, feeding, she's generally more demanding and needs more stimulation, all of which is exhausting)

I know that's probably impossible to answer over the Internet, and I should take her back to the tongue tie clinic, but that involves a trek across London on the tube in a heatwave. Sorry for epic post. - I think in part I just needed to vent!

Could be either, neither or both I suppose, hard to know from what you say.

Were you given stretching exercises to do to prevent reattachment? Saying that, some people do the exercises faithfully and it still can reattach.

Get tongue checked again we had to have ours cut 4 times.

Ugh McBaby that's what I'm dreading. Did yours eventually cease growing back after 4th snip, or did you just learn to live with it?

We had cuts at 8,12,14and 24 weeks. The first one was not it deep enough then it reattached after 2 and 3.

After number 4 it has been great her latch it mostly painless but I still think its quite shallow but I am not in ago y and crying through and dreading every feed.

Dds was cut 5 times!!

The last was done by mr mervyn griffiths at Southampton hospital. We did the stretching exercises religiously. I eventually gave up BF as I was in too much pain. :(

TT can and do keep reattaching sometimes. Apparently it's rare 1 in 10000, but it happened with both my dc.

Good luck!

Agree with maw - could be either, neither or both. You can check for reattachment yourself - run a finger under the tongue. Do you feel anything other than complete smoothness? Is there any hint of a 'speedbump'?

My DS reattached 4 times. Learned to live with it. Dd has reattached twice, and learned to live with it. Both my DC are the 1 in whatever, unfortunately :(

Bunty d'you mean run a finger along the bottom of her mouth under the tongue, or actually run a finger along the underside of her tongue?

If I run a finger along the base of her mouth (under tongue) I can feel where the frenulum attaches quite close to the back of her gums, but I don't know if that's normal.

Ugh, ugh, ugh. I can't bear the thought that it's grown back again. But DD's been so fussy feeding recently (pulls off every few seconds, seems to get frustrated, often screams at the breast when I try to reattach her and sometimes seems to struggle to control the flow of milk - coughing and spluttering, etc), that I doubt this can be solely down to a growth/development spurt or the heat or something like that.

I just want breastfeeding to go well (and, ideally, easily!) It just feels so unfair that things will get better for a little bit and then worse again. I so want to bf my DD, ideally until she's 1, but the stress of her fussy feeding and worry over whether the tt is growing back (and if I have it cut again it'll just grow back again) is making me question whether it's all worth it and I should just give up and use formula (something I never, ever thought I'd think, let alone do). I just feel so sad and frustrated that our breastfeeding relationship isn't working out how I anticipated

A 'normal' tongue you should feel no frenulum at all.

I think it works be worth getting it looked at and cut again. Tbh, it prob will grow back again - but when they get older, they don't have to compensate as much as the mouth/tongue is bigger. Hence why I've not had DS or dd revised again.

When having our 4th Cut the surgeon said it would be unlikely to go back because we were having the cut so much further away from the first 3. She thought the scar tissue would be active after the first three cuts and after the gap it wouldn't reform.

Cranial osteopathy was amazing I could see her tongue coming closer to the gumline after each session. We had it before her 4th cut and she had never covered her bottom gum.

My daughter bit me through every feed for the first six months and now her latch is great at 11/2 month and about what to stop. I am glad I kept going (aside from the fact she would not take a bottle and had no choice) it makes me happy to see how freely she moves her tongue and it is so long now she can nearly touch her chin!

McBaby Did you have the 4th cut done by someone different than the first 3? While I really like and trust the specialist who did our two snips (she trained under Mervyn Griffiths, so I'm confident she knows her stuff) I'm wondering if we'd be better off going to someone else? Or trying laser division rather than a simple scissor snip...

I had mine done by the same person each time. She is a pediatric consultant ENT surgeon and runs the tongue tie clinic at the royal free so does all of the redos and more complicated cases. I trusted her and really liked her and was willing to do it after 12 weeks without GA which some wont do!

as a stop gap why dont you get a LC to visit you at home to give you reassurance about whther the TT has reattached or not?
you will have to pay but it might be worth it during the heat wave!

I agree with the other posters above that cranial osteopathy was fabulous when our LO had his PTT snipped. had about 4 sessions. they may have helped more than the zactual snip!

btw are there any signs of teeth coming through? it is just we had similar problems with LO before his first teeth came through.

I don't think she's teething yet - can't feel anything in her gums...

Oh. - and thanks for the cranial osteopathy tip. We've been seeing one regularly (and had treatments directly after each snip, and they don't seem to think there's much wrong with her! Haven't been since feeding problems started again, though...