Tongue tie and breastfeeding

[Curiousmummy87]

Hi all

My baby is 5 weeks old and had an 80% tongue tie corrected a week ago. Weight gain isn't great and I have been breastfeeding with topups till now. I saw a lactation consultant yesterday to try to correct baby's latch and since last night baby is very distressed when I try to latch to the breast and I've ended up giving full bottle topups and baby will just scream and scream and not latch to the breast. I am continuing to pump and will give as much EBM as I can but I'm at my wits end. Is there any hope my baby will Breastfeed?

My nipple isn't as hard as the bottle nipple and it bends when I'm latching him. I tried nipple Shields and those made things worse

Im sure more knowledgeable posters than me will come along, but when DD2 had her tongue tie divided at 8weeks, we were told that things would get worse before they got better. Apparently for up to 10days. So maybe keep persevering, use the time between Christmas and new year for a lovely big babymoon in bed, resting, drinking loads of water, loads of skin to skin and see how things are at the end of the week? It was so hard but we did see a lot of improvement and I managed to keep combi feeding until 8months, which is such an achievement given I was on the point of stopping due to all the tongue tie problems. Congrats on your baby.

@Noodlesnotstrudels thanks for the positivity. I've cried so much today. I hope I will reach a stage where he will be able to latch into my breast again 😔

I hope you do mamage it, how are you getting on now? I heard that if you just squeeze the breast it helps baby to latch as milk is being extracted so he will latch better. Baby has to have a wide gape before the latch and whilst he's feeding just squeeze every now and again to keep milk going.

Hey, it's so tough and you are doing great! My son had tongue tie division at 1 week old and still wouldn't latch and would scream when I tried, nipple shields didn't help me either, I found them too fiddly. At about 5 weeks he started latching more and getting feeds in, by 8 weeks he had cut down on bottles and started refusing them. He's now 10 weeks and ebf and has been gaining weight. So it definitely can be done, keeping going can be hard and it is all so much worry but it's definitely possible! I was told by the infant feeding team that it can take 4 weeks for them to relearn what to do with their tongue.

We also saw a cranial osteopath and had 3 sessions. She said he had a lot of tension in his jaw that was affecting his latch and his sucking. It seems to have helped! We did paced bottle feeding as well so it wasn't too much easier for him to get milk from the bottle rather than the breast. Also do lots of skin to skin with baby, end feeds at the breast.. just any positive time at the breast even if there's no active feeding, making it a happy place for baby to be. Good luck, I hope you get there! Remember you are doing amazing, triple feeding is hard work x

Also if you can get as much support as you can. Do you health visitors have an infant feeding team? They can give lots of guidance on latch. Also look into local breastfeeding support groups, they are normally volunteer lead and can be helpful. Unfortunately no one has the ability to magically make the baby latch, I wished they did, but having people who are cheering you on and understand the want to breastfeed is really helpful.

Ooh, yes, @AspieMumma reminded me that we also took DD2 to an osteopath (not a cranial osteopath, just a standard osteopath who specialised in children). DD2 had also been breech until 39w and osteopathy can be recommended for breech babies too. We did 4 sessions and she always seemed very chilled and happy afterwards. If you are in London, I can send you a recommendation.