How was feeding after tongue tie division?

[Writerwannabe83]

I have a son who is now 17 days old and when he was 9 days old he had a severe posterior tongue tie cut.

Prior to this, feeding him was agonising. Both nipples were cut and I would be bleeding from them each time he fed. I would be crying through every feed because of how painful it was. It was hideous.

Anyway, he had his TT division and things improved dramatically and the woman who did it said we will still have good and bad days and to give it a good 2 weeks to all settle down before expecting to have perfect feeds.

We are 8 days post division now and although feeds are now 95% pain free my DS still has issues with opening his mouth wide, having a shallow latch and also isn't very good at getting a good seal, especially when feeding on my right breast. He still takes in a lot of air whilst feeding and I can feel milk dribbling down the side of my breast as he feeds and he's always got milk all round his face when he delatches.

I guess my question is will he ever have a perfect latch and feeding technique or will he always have issues despite the division?

The lady did tell me she couldn't guarantee that cutting his TT would be a magic fix.

I'm of the belief that although there are still some problems the feeds are now painless, my nipples have pretty much fully healed and so actually, getting the TT cut has led to a positive outcome, whereas DH keeps saying what was the point in doing it as DS still isn't feeding properly I.e perfectly.

Has anyone else had a TT division where the baby completely comes back from all the feeding issues, or can there be instances where some babies will always have some feeding problems despite the procedure?

Had tongue tie division on my DS. It seemed to help as like you, the pain got so much better and I wasn't crying with every feed. DS also always had milk spilling and around his mouth when he detached for the first 2 months. (I constantly had muslins tucked in my bra!) However I think this had more to do with my milk supply being too high and not adjusting to what he needed. Could this be the same for you? After 2 months, we had much less 'leakage'.

To your DH who says what was the point- it helped make feeding pain free for you, surely that's a huge positive?

Just to add that DD's tongue tie had to be done a second time 2 weeks later as they didn't get it all/it reattached so it's worth checking in the mouth in case the same has happened. As well as the TT snip, our DD also had to learn how to latch and feed properly again. We did this by going back to feeding basics e.g checking positoning and technique is spot on, and also doing tongue exercises with her. If you Google suck training thenu should find lots of info.

Re the shallow latch, we had the same initially too as she had to relearn this all again. I got a deeper latch by doing lots of skin to skin before a feed ... I dunno how or why but it works by making them want to open their mouth wider! By making sure her chin was pushed into the underside of my breast before latching, as opposed to the standard nose to nipple approach but also by teaching her to open her mouth on cue by getting her to mimic me. The other thing I did was once she was on, slowly lean back so that gravity would hold her on and get her on deeper as she fed. All sounds quite batty I know but it all worked!

Both of mine had tongue ties but after a while got back to purely breastfeeding with no issues :)

Your ds is still very young and it will take him a while to learn to take it more easily. Also it will take a while for your milk to settle down to the right amount.
Sounds like hes doing well to me, as long as hes putting weiht on hes doing great :)