Tongue tie

[Janbaby2025]

Hi
I'm aware noone online can truly diagnose for me. I'm awaiting a GP appointment tomorrow. However Im suspecting my 5 week old may have tongue tie after alot of breastfeeding problems and wondering if anyone else has experienced and knows if this looks like it could be..

Also this is my first post so apologies if I have out this in the wrong place 🙈

Definitely looks like a tongue tie to me… you need to get yourself to a breastfeeding clinic

How did you get on at the GP @Janbaby2025? In my experience they know very little, if anything about TT let alone being able to diagnose

Hi there it's a midwife with experience of supporting breastfeeding groups. I also attended specialist tongue tie training.

It's not possible to diagnose tongue from looking at it. Someone needs to assess the range of the tongue movement. It used to be a practice to snip every tongue tie. This was before we realised many babies compensate very well.

In my experience, a lot of the referrals were done inappropriately and the real issue was poor positioning and attachment. Can you tell what problems you have had so far?

It looks like it to me. The NHS is absolutely useless when it comes to tongue tie. They will try and fob you off or tell you it's a latch problem. We waited 8weeks, saw 6 or 7 different midwives / breastfeeding specialists / HVs when DD2 literally couldn't move her tongue enough to drink properly and she was quickly dropping down the centiles. Plus if they finally do recognise it, theres usually a long wait to get it snipped. If you can afford it, my advice is to find a private practitioner. Its often cheaper than you think. We saw someone on the Weds and it was divided by the following Tuesday - the NHS told me it was a 4-6week wait. You can look up someone in your area here or if you are near South London, I'm happy to recommend who I went to - https://www.tongue-tie.org.uk/

Hi there it's NHS midwife again. I do accept one need to see an infant feeding midwife for proper tongue tie assessment and a lot of shop-floor midwives are lacking time, training and skills to give proper support with positioning and attachment.

Saying this, I am a little bit suspicious about private health care. I have been recommended eye surgery through my husband's health insurance. I spoke to 2 NHS specialists to get 2nd and 3rd opinion, they both advised it wasn't necessary. That was over 20 years ago, my eye is fine.

Tongue tie devision is not a magic bullet to every feeding problem. Saying this, you will never meet 2 clinicians (or parents) completely agreeing on everything. So I am open to the possibility it worked for you. Have you noticed a massive improvement after tongue tie devision?

Further to an earlier post.... in my experience GPs aren't usually very good at assessing tongue tie. OP, have been to BF support groups and what do they say?

The private practitioner I saw was an ex-NHS nurse who used to run London's largest tongue tie clinic, so im very confident in her experience and ethics. She was shocked at my experience and how all the MW / HV / bf specialists had not recognised the 90% TT that DD2 had. She also said that DD2s TT was more complex than she was able to treat and referred me to a specialist who was an NHS consultant that runs a private clinic one day a week, so it wasn't as if she was chasing ££.

I'm incredibly angry that we went through 8w of feeds taking 90mins, topping up with formula, triple feeding (extremely traumatic for me due to having to triple feed DD1 whilst and after she was in NICU), all while also trying to parent my toddler. It ruined the first few weeks of DD2s life and as she is probably my final baby, means I will never had had the bf experience that I wanted to. If someone had properly looked in her mouth instead of immediately assuming it was a supply issue, we might have caught it sooner and been able to get back on track more easily.

We did see some initial improvement, although we went on to have some other issues relating to her tongue that eventually meant she was referred to SALT. With their support, in the end we combi fed for around 9months and managed to get feeds down to around 50mins. I am quite sure that without the TT division, I'd have stopped BF at 9/10weeks or so because it was totally unsustainable. So hopefully DD2 will benefit in the long term from being able to keep going for longer.