Has anyone left tongue tie alone?

[Jay185]

My baby is 4 months old and has tongue tie but feeds well and has never had a problem with weight gain. We had a referral for the nhs and were seen by Kings yesterday who didn't carry out the procedure after the assessment because breast feeding is going well.

I didn't want him to have the cut if it's not a problem but then I don't want to have problems later and him have to go under general anaesthetic in the future. Has anyone ever left their baby's tongue tie alone and it caused a problem later? Has anyone's child got tongue tie and been totally fine?

Thank you.

I didn't have my son's done. His latch was fine though he did have some weight issues but caused by allergies.

He's 5 almost 6 now. It has stretched and he is fine. No speech issues from it, can eat well etc.

I had my baby’s snipped even though we had swapped to bottles and he was feeding ok by then. The reason was that my friend is a dentist and had told me she had seen a lot of teenagers have to have tongue tie snipped as apparently they can’t have certain types of braces if they have a tongue tie (something like this anyway, would need to check again with her!!) I decided it was a procedure he wouldn’t remember as a tiny baby but as a teen it would potentially be awful and painful, liquid diet etc. I know that isn’t what you asked for but I just wanted to let you know the other side!

I had tongue tie. I'm probably old enough to be your great grandmother. Nothing was done about it in those days and I was breast fed.
But I still have one awful problem ... I can't rroll my rrrs. If you can face having a son who can't roll his, I'd just leave it.

Yes because when she was born in 1990, nobody checked for such a thing. It wasn’t until she went to the dentist aged 3 that they noticed.
It did cause huge problems with feeding, she couldn’t latch on properly and it was all blamed on me, and my milk never came in, so unfortunately I had to go onto bottled feeding her at 3 weeks. Other than that she’s had no issues at all.

There are too many people being told their babies are ‘tongue tied’ now when they are perfectly formed. It’s a business. Quite a profitable one now.
If he’s doing fine, leave him alone. If he’s not go through GP and paediatrician not someone doing it in a shop window.

The problem is, you won't know until you have to deal with the issues that may or may not arise.

I had my daughter's snipped when she was tiny - over in seconds, sorted. I teach a 5 year old whose tongue tie has caused his speech to be completely unintelligible. Correcting his speech will take years of therapy.

Tongue ties are only cut if they’re causing feeding problems, so there are loads of babies with tongue ties that are left alone.

I have a tounge tie. They didn't snip them when I was born - 40 years later it has never caused any issues apart from I can't stick my tounge out as far as others!

I'm an 80s baby but also still have a tongue tie and can't roll my R's... Bit annoying when learning Spanish. My speech is otherwise fine and no other effects I can think of.

Tongue!

DH is 60 and has tongue tie that was never addressed when he was a baby. He can't stick his tongue out but other than that it doesn't seem to have done him any harm.

My 2 had tongue ties. Didn’t do anything about it as they could feed just fine from a bottle and I was never going to breast feed anyway. Eldest is 5 now and speech is fine although we haven’t actually tried rolling Rs at home, I’m making a note to ask her French teacher though! Youngest isn’t even 2 yet so not saying loads but what he does say is understandable.

DS had it bad enough that I stopped breast feeding. No problems with feeding or speech later in life that I’ve noticed. Glad I didn’t get it done.

I have a tongue tie and no issues other than not being able to stick my tongue out.
DS has a tongue tie and whilst it meant I stopped breastfeeding because I couldn't cope basically 24 hr a day feeding and it was going to take at least two weeks to get it sorted, he's turned into a strapping 16 year old rugby player. Must ask him how far he can stick out his tongue .

My 4 year old DS has a tongue tie that we have left. We discovered his quite late on at around 8 months, and by that point the NHS wouldn't touch it and I struggled to find a private practitioner in our area who would be willing to do the separation.

The general advice was to wait and see if any problems arose.

He is absolutely fine, infact he speaks very well. He does mispronounce some words as most kids his age do, and sometimes sounds like he has a slight lisp, but all within a normal range for his age.

None of the teachers from his nursery or school have ever raised concerns with his speech.

Obviously we are still waiting and seeing if he has any struggles if the future but I am optimistic that it won't be the case.

Its not completely without complications. I had my 2nd child’s tongue tie snipped. It became fleshy and scarred and was worse than before. The surgeon who originally snipped it sorted it out under a general anaesthetic. She was a big fan of bf and I’d bf my eldest till he was two so was a “committed bf”.

Bf fine till was two.

I had my baby's done at 3 days and regret doing it as it hurt her and made no difference to BFIng (it was still a nightmare with numerous problems).

We discovered my DH has one when DD's was diagnosed. He was in his 50s and had no idea he'd got one. So I am highly dubious of the benefits of getting them cut if it isn't affecting feeding (friend struggled to get her baby's done as she wasn't EBF, yet it was affecting both BF and bottles!).

The ENT noticed my DD had tongue tie when she was 4, recommended snipping it and said I'd get an appointment through. Never got the appointment and didn't see the point of chasing it as she didn't seem to have any issues (she had had latch issues as a baby but managed to breastfeed despite them, just was pretty painful for me, so tongue tie wasn't picked up then). She did have some speech trouble but quite common ones (not being able to roll her Rs, some trouble with Ls) but overcame them by 7 anyway.

I have a tongue tie and so does my DS it hasn’t caused any problems for either of us. We were both breastfed just fine

My son had to be circumcised in his teens. I've never blamed myself for not having had it done when he was a baby.

Nope.
If it ain’t broke, why fix it was my attitude.

They said that it could affect his latch. It didn’t, I breast fed till 8 months.
They said it would affect his weight. It didn’t, he went from a teeny 5lb newborn to a baby with actual rolls of fat on his thighs and arms very quickly 😁 the kind that you HAVE to squish every day.
They said it would affect his speech... Erm… where is the off button on this crystal clear voice…?

So no I didn’t. Was absolutely fine.
I am a bit of a maverick where my kids are concerned though admittedly .

If the team didn’t think it was worth snipping then I would trust their judgement.

Yup. Dd has tongue tie.

It was supposed to be snipped as a baby, but a communication error meant it wasn’t picked up properly and by the time it was, she was too old. She had already weaned, so unless it affected her speech, they were content to leave it.

Shes 9 now and still can’t stick her tongue out properly. It doesn’t affect her speech or her eating

I don’t have tongue tie and I still can’t roll my rrrrrs

DD was diagnosed with posterior tongue tie when she was newborn - she latched fine but was a very slow feeder which HV put done to the tongue tie but actually I think that maybe she just had a big appetite and fed alot. No issues now at all but might be different because it was posterior.