Newborn tongue tie - go private?

[ebbyniko1108]

Hello everyone!

I have a 1 week old baby girl who I am breastfeeding. The first 3 days she was breastfeeding well but I did experience very bad nipple pain and soreness. She was feeding tho that was most important for me. But then suddenly she started not to take my breast easily and was having difficulties latching. She cries when she cant latch and gets very frustrated. When she cries I cry too because I do not want to see her hungry. In the end I manage to breastfeed her but it can take a little time and stress until she latches on. She gets hungry quite often and also wants to stay on the breast for a long time. Today she woke up again at 10 and we breastfed for around 2-3 hours. She falls asleep and when I put her in her bed she wakes back up and wants more. I have talked to my midwife about this and she had a check and said there is a little bit of a tongue tie. She booked us in for a assessment with the nhs next week Friday. However I am not sure how to manage this until then because I do not want to see my baby being upset. I also do not want to bottle feed her as I want the bond between us when breastfeeding her. So I found someone private who is coming tomorrow. I found her on the tongue-tie.org.uk website and she is a accredited tongue tie practitioner and is fully insured and regulated by the care quality commission. I am just a bit scared and dont know if I can trust someone outside the NHS to cut the tongue tie for my baby. What are your thoughts? Did anyone go private too? How was the experience? I guess if they are fully insured then there should not be a problem should there?

thank you in advance,

ebby

I heard a recent radio phone in about babies who are tt.
there were poor desperate mothers who’s baby had been on the waiting list to have it snipped for several months!
I will see if I can find a link & post, I think there were people who had had it done privately on too iirc.

Hello! I went private and had my dd's tongue tie fixed on day nine. We went for a certified lactation consultant and she was brilliant. Well worth the money and helped with getting the latch right afterwards. You may not get the extra support through the NHS easily. Hope it goes well!

There is absolutely no difference in quality between private and NHS practitioners, the qualifications and training is the same. Please don't give this another thought.

If she’s got the relevant qualifications and you can afford it then go for it, a week feels like ages in the early days of breast feeding and I’m pretty sure fixing tongue tie is a very quick and simple procedure so I’d go ahead if I were you OP.

Feeding your baby is more important than your personal need to breastfeed. If she will feed better from a bottle then why wouldn’t you do that. You will bond with her if you have to bottle feed her.

Ignore this - it sounds like your baby is getting enough milk once she does latch, so as long as she's not losing weight and is producing wet/dirty nappies there's no need to switch to bottles.

The difference between private and NHS is the time and money. Id 100% go private if you can afford it

@Eightieschildren that's really not helpful.

Ignore this poster. Of course if you decide to stop breast feeding your baby will be fine with a bottle and your bond won’t suffer, but persisting with breast feeding is totally natural and a great thing to do, don’t let anyone put you off.

My baby does get enough milk once she latches. The problem is only that it takes us a little longer to get starting. This is why I am going for the tongue tie cut so she can latch quicker. i do not want her to get used to bottles as I want to breastfeed her.

Thank you!!

Thank you so much! Reading this made me very happy!

Thank you! I will definitely go for the private as it is sooner so that my baby is feeding well and happy

Thank you! Yes it feels ages away. Yes I got pain in my nipples too but I am seriously fine for me all that matters is that my baby is happy and is not getting frustrated....

It says ‘sorry, this episode is not currently available’.
It was a medical Monday segment on Jeremy Vine with Dr Sarah Jarvis. No idea why it isn’t on their playlist, sorry.

We paid for a private midwife for DD's tongue tie.

When she was born the first thing I asked for in her newborn check was for her to be assessed for a tie as DH has a severe one which somehow, his mother and midwives missed when he was small.
We were fobbed off, being told there could be one but wait and see.
She lost alot of weight in the first few days and was almost admitted to hospital for assisted feeding.
For 3 weeks we desperately tried to get anyone to take notice of us and either examine or refer but nobody did, so we went private.

It was the best £200 I have ever spent.

The midwife was so helpful. She asked lots of questuons about me and DD before even examining her. She asked things nobody else had which made me question why nobody had paid attention to my milk supply issues etc. She made us a feeding plan as we had to combination feed due to me having a very low supply as well.
DD had a severe posterior tie. It was snipped there and then on my living room floor.
She cried for approx 2 seconds before latching on and feeding right away.
We had some post tie exercises to do with her to get her used to moving her tongue normally and promote healing which was fine.

I woukd 100% pay again if I had to.

For context, our midwife agreed eventually to refer us when DD was 3 weeks old (the day before a private midwife came out).
She is now nearing 6months and we have NEVER received any confirmation or appointment for a tie referral.....

We went private (at the time the other option was to wait a year when it would have to be done under general anaesthetic 🙄) dd was feeding within seconds and the difference was spectacular.

We paid private here, there's so much more to a TT than just feeding issues.. reflux, sleep, speech etc. If you have Instagram I can recommend some really helpful accounts for information. Hope your little one is happier soon!

Everyone I know has paid to have it done privately. Made such a difference and these are qualified professionals. Hope it makes your feeding journey much easier.

If you’re determined to breastfeed you should get the tongue tie snipped as quickly as possible. We waited a week to go with the NHS and had to use nipple shields and supplement with formula and in the end my supply was affected and my baby for a long time would not latch back on without nipple shields. It’s resulted in him being fully formula fed now. I’m ok with this as they were the right decisions for us at the time and I never had a huge desire to breastfeed and there are definite benefits to being able to share the load with my partner (that being said I was very upset about it all while it was going on).

If I was to advise any new mum wanting to breastfeed I would say pay to get professional support in your first week if you can afford it!