was talking about tongue tie and bf with my mum ( a midwife) the other day...

[nappiesLaGore]

and she was saing that the policy in her hosp/area was not to treat... (whereas it is really well dealt with aroun d here)

she said she thought this was all down to research which showed that tongue tie doesnt really cause a prob for little babies and so is left to hopefully go on its own, or only ever picked up later wth speech development problems.

and her theory is that the research shows this b/c it is all done ata time where ff was much more the norm... so b/c here simply werent that many people bf, it didnt show up as 'a problem' . which i happen to know it is when trying to bf.

i had my 3rd baby down here in southampton area... and ds3's v mild tongue tie was picked up and fixed by my fab mw- but missed at first and so i was having trouble with the latch, and getting sore.... which is why she looked more closely.

now, i had terrible trouble getting a good latch with ds1 - bloody awful. and was sheer determination got me through it... but i am pretty sure now that he had tongue tie and it just was never even mentioned as a possibility, despite all the help i sought.

think there should be more awareness.
is so easily remedied!

As you probably know, but others might not, the general practice is not to treat unless it causes problems with speech, which is of course long after poor sore mum has given up bf and switched to bottles. Made me so angry that no-one diagnosed it with DD until 6 weeks old and I went to a baby cafe where the midwives have a special interest in it and have set up a clinic at local hospital. Doctor even diagnosed me with mastitis and gave antibiotics! GP did newborn palate check but failed to spot it, another GP checked DD's mouth for thrush and failed to spot it, health visitor said I was unlucky to be fair-skinned and therefore prone to sore nipples (speechless at that one!), another 4 midwives didn't even check for it and eventually I stopped asking for help with bf cause I felt I was being a nuisance.No-one could see anything wrong with positioning yet still they didn't consider a problem with DD. Apparently it's not in midwives' or doctors' training any more, because formula feeding is so common (and is the easy solution when problems with bf), but in the really olden days midwives used to snip the frenulum at birth, keeping a fingernail specially sharpened for the purpose, cause tongue-tie was so common and there really wasn't an alternative to bf.

What is tongue tie, please?

Thankfully where I live - Surrey St Peters Hospital are now doing it because of us Mum's who were travelling down to Southampton to have it done.

After 2 weeks of torturous b/f it was heaven after it was done and it was only a partial t/t anyway!

FA the underneath of the toungue has a piece of skin attaching it to the bottom of the jaw area, babies can't stick their tongue out.

Awww! Thanks Cargirl

oh bravo cargirl. hopefully it will spread further from there.

piemama - yes that is exactly my point, that you can ask and ask for help and just keep gettign told youre not positioning right or the baby doesnt want it or whatever and you should just give up - and its total bull, not to put too fine apoin t on it!

i WISH there were more awareness of this v common, but v easily fixed problem.

starlight - i guess, but personally wouldnt want to go slicing away in there without knowing what im snipping at iyswim - i dont think its too much to ask for a trained mw or other health professional just to routinely take a quick look and then quick snip if found - just like they used to! takes all of about 4 minutes and is v often the difference between a mother bf or not.

nappies, your mum needs to be aware of the NICE guidance on this, and to inform policy makers at her hospital here it is and it is quite accepting of treatment in the newborn stage.

I have a tied tongue and so do my two littlest, when I had finished bf my youngest, my Mum casually mentioned the fact that I had found it so painful was due to her tongue!!!! I tried so hard and put up with the bleeding and cried every time she latched on for weeks, and perservered, I wish someone had told me what was going on! I thought everyone had the same probs or that I had a poor technique, so, yes, shout and let people know about it! btw, I diagnosed the tied tongues myself within minutes of the birth!

hi tiktok, and thanks for that.
she did actually say something about the NICE guidelines in that conversation... cant remember what tho.

she feels awful that it didnt occur to her that tonguetie could be the problem first time round for me. and now, i believe she routinely checks babies out for it.

she has recently moved to a new role, setting up and running a 24h midwifery services helpline for the area she works in, staffed by experiences mw's. and so is in a less clinical role. but part of the new role means compiling a 'book' of knowledge, relevent largely to the local area, adn im quite sure that this is in there now.

When I was pregnant with DD I saw Psychomum struggling to bf her DS2 (no 5) because of a tongue tie - she had enough experience to know it wasn't right, and again - pushed for referral to Southampton.

It was snipped, he learnt to latch and it was great

DH has a tongue tie, and the very first thing I asked when they were checking DD over was "Is her tongue ok?!!?" they gave me look but checked and she was fine (as was DS when I asked the same question).

I can cause big problems with latches and I don't understand why it isn't routinely checked at birth

I really wish babies were checked straight from birth for tongue-tie. And to be honest, why aren't they?

My 2nd DC was born with it and after a torturous 7 weeks of trying to BF a MW finally noticed DD was tongue tied and it was causing painful BF (and she was a MW at a BF support group).

DD had it fixed at 8 weeks but she never managed to learn to lift her tongue and I had to use shields to BF. I am sure the shields affected my supply and I stopped BF when she was just over 3 1/2 months.

I am still so angry that all of this could have been avoided if a simple check was done from birth.

My DS1 was diagnosed with this at birth. I suffered 6 months of difficult bf and then had to repeatedly save him from choking to death when weaning him. I was told by my HV that bf problems do not occur with tongue tie. My GP said his tongue tie was severe and he had virtually no mobility in his tongue. I had to wait a very long time to be seen by a consultant (he was then over a year old).

I subsequently found out that it can be snipped easily in a newborn and at a hospital local to me.