Petition for tongue-tie division

[JBrd]

If you can spare a minute, please have a look at the website below and sign the petition to improve the NHS services for the tongue-tie procedure in Cambridge.

www.ipetitions.com/petition/tongue-tie-cambs/

It takes so long to get help with tongue-tie diagnosis and division through the NHS, time which a lot of mothers just don't have if you want to continue breastfeeding. Getting it sorted privately is faster, but expensive. Having this service on the NHS could potentially spare many parents a lot of anxiety and heartache!

I managed to get DS2 a GP referral to the children's outpatient clinic to have his tt seen, but of course it took about 4 weeks - see HV, try get to GP straight after giving birth, wait for letter, then it's Christmas...

When I got there, they said "if you have another baby with this, you could bring him sooner". How???

The doctors took the tongue tie seriously, were well-informed about the research, etc. But had no idea of the process by which patients are sent to them.

And thanks for setting up the petition, of course!

Oh, I didn't set up the petition, a friend of mine who also had a bad experience, found it!

It's ridiculous, isn't it, how long the NHS referral system takes. When DS was diagnosed with tt, I called the consultants' PAs to get an idea about waiting times, to be told it'll be at least 3-4 weeks once they get the letter from the GP. There was no way in hell I could wait that long, so I bit the bullet and had it done privately - the tt specialist came to us the same day to do the procedure, but it cost £125

But what annoys me the most is that in spite of being aware of the problems we were having with breastfeeding, nobody, be it nurses, midwives or HV, ever even thought of investigating if DS had tongue tie! It was only when I went to a bf clinic that it was picked up (the bf consultant took one look at his latch and said 'Hmmm, I wonder if he has tongue-tie...'). Ok, so I had no idea about tt, but it's such a simple check, how can they just ignore it?! Still makes me so angry - if the NHS really wants to support breastfeeding like they always claim they do, this should really be part of the routing checks.

Rant over, sorry

Ds was tt. I suspected from the beginning but the mw and hv were adamant that he wasn't. It was again the bf clinic that confirmed it. Eventually got an appointment to see the consultant (even though also the gp didn't think it was true) in Addenbrookes when ds was 3 months old..... By then we had been throught the worst (absolute torturing agony) and as his mouth grew it was getting better so I decided not to have it done.

The bf clinic lady had just been on a course to be able to do the [procedure herself, but at the time she could still not do it in Cambridge. Can't remember the details or if it was a regional thing.....

There's an LLL group in Cambridge, they should know the latest on getting a TT snipped locally.