Tongue tie and BF..

[Jaysfinished]

My LO has a tongue tie (being snipped next week, hes 4wks) past three four days my nipples have been excruciatingly painful - (READ OUCH!) Have spoken to my lactation consultant who says this is common with babies with tongue tie. I am currently expressing milk and bottle feeding, but just wondered if anyone has any experience with this, and what you did? Did the feeding/latch get better quickly after the snip? did LO take a while to adjust?
Anything that might help really!

hello, my ds1 had tongue tie and it was agony. much improved after a snip at 2-3wks. the snip very quick and he had no problems after. my nipples took a while to improve, but his feeding pattern improved straight away - he was doing 2hr feeds before to try to get enought milk!

there are quite a few threads on this, am in a hurry so can't search but put tongue tie into the search for messages bit and you can see it is very common and lots of others have had it.

well done for the expressing, is he latching on at all?

best of luck

hi jaysthird
both mine were tongue tied. ds1 we gave up before I found out what it was, but ds2 was snipped at 3 weeks and it did the trick.
he could actually latch on and stay on as soon as it was done, so it wa sjust a matter of waiting for the cracks etc to heal on my nipples and then it was all pain-free.

there are ways of latching a tongue-tied baby on to minimise pain, you can sort of squeeze the boob to flatten it a bit and then try and "post" it into babies mouth to get as mcuh as poss in.
also using the cross cradle hold can helpa lot because it means you can keep baby and boob together if he slips off a lot

thanks ladies!

i do the cross cradle thing, mainly becasue i have big boobs and i have to do it to hold them up so the nip doesnt fall out. I do find it easy to 'push' him on in this position. I have had a lactation consultant come out to me and shes given me some tips, like pointing the nip skywards as much as possible so it can hit the roof of his mouth easier. Thing is hes started to reject most of the areola in favour of just the tip of the nipple, hence the soreness thats occurred! Its hard work expressing every few hours ( i have two other LO's ) but i think the bad boob is slowly getting a bit better and thats just after two days....sorry to go on, i will do a search now for other threads, thanks again

yes, the nipple feeding is very painful isn't it?
hope it gets better soon after he has it snipped

ds had snip at 4 weeks. immediate improvement with my nipple pain, but took a while to become totally pain free and took him 2-3 days to get used to a new way of latching. good luck!

My son had tongue tie, wasn't snipped, fed beautifully. Sounds like you guys were unlucky. Hope the baby is fine after his op.

Try feeding lying down.

I wouldn't worry about it being snipped. It's over very quickly and all you need to do is to put the baby to the breast immediately so that the cut doesn't heal and the tie reform.

If it doesn't stretch then yes!

I hope its not his tongue tie thats preventing him from crying - he rarely does and sleeps really well...perhaps when its snipped he might become the baby from hell....

goes away to rethink!

jaysfinished, I doubt it. my ds2 can scream for england, and always has done despite the tongue tie. am sure yours will be just the same after he's snipped.

and starlight, I don't think that the tongue-tie is necessarily the cause of long feeding sessions either because after having been snipped ds2 still took forever to feed. wasn't til he was a fair bit older that he got a lot more efficient at it

jaysfinished, DS had his tt snipped at 6 months (bloody HVs never noticed and just thought he was "too lazy" to latch on properly!). Lying down was the only way he could latch on for longer periods and it was the least painful for me also.
Once he'd been snipped he latched on perfectly straight away and the sore nips disappeared in days.

thanks ladies, will give you a wee update after Wednesdays procedure!

My baby has a tongue!!! He keeps sticking it out, as if to say... "whats this then"

He was so good, bless the little mite, and the consultant was lovely. It was all over in a matter of minutes, like you all said. with very little crying and even less blood! I was able to go to a private room after and give him his feed which felt heaps better straight away!!

Yes it was a bit traumatic for him, yes i did have a few little tears and yes it was the most money i have spent in a 3 minute space of time, but i know it will be totally worth it

Thanks for your experiences ladies

That is brilliant news.

Well done Baby Jaysfinished.

Well done, just caught up with this thread. My DS had a very tight tongue tie and it was snipped at 2 weeks. His feeding improved and became less painful that VERY SAME EVENING! What's more, it made my milk finally finally finally come in, and after a couple more weeks pumping (yuck) and taking motilium, I was able to go to total BF.

DS still has a slightly heart shaped tongue, though he can waggle it and stick it out now. It's mega cute!