Reflux/ tongue tie

[Cdoc]

Hi all

hoping for some shared experiences please! My baby is 11 weeks today and suffering with some pretty rotten reflux, being sick 10-15 times a day and visibly uncomfortable. GP’s and HV’s haven’t been particularly bothered because he is gaining weight well and remains on the same centile he was born on. Baby is exclusively breast fed. GP prescribed Gaviscon, which I am reluctant to give given the constipation issues it can cause. The GP also recommended I try cutting out dairy and soya to see if there is an allergy (baby has no other symptoms, no rash, poo is normal).

I visited a lactation specialist today that checked for tongue tie and confirmed he has an anterior tongue tie and a shallow latch on my breast. I have an over supply which has meant baby can gain weight with minimal effort on the breast so has masked the tongue tie and latch issue. I also have no pain in feeding. She is now doing an urgent referral to have this properly reviewed before he is 12 weeks. No-one had ever reviewed him for tongue tie before and I feel so sad for him that we could have helped his reflux issue sooner.

Just wanted to hear from anyone that had a tongue tie snipped and whether it made a difference to reflux at all, and feeding?

Thank you in advance!

Hi, all three of mine had tongue tie. My eldest had it snipped and it improved his ability to latch. Prior to this he was able to latch using a plastic nipple guard. As he got bigger he struggled to get enough milk at the rate he wanted it so I ended up exclusively expressing / pumping and feeding him bottled breast milk.

@FatherJoseFernandez thank you for sharing, sounds like snipping it was definitely worthwhile

Could anyone advise on post tongue tied procedure exercises. My 4 month old granddaughter had the procedure done in Spain and mum and dad have been told to carry out a series of exercises multiple times a day which are quite intrusive and upsetting. Did parents in the UK have to do similar?

Thank you

I wouldn't rule out cmpa. When I took out dairy and soya I didn't believe my daughter had any symptoms aside from the reflux and silent reflux but her poos did improve and she probably had slightly abnormal poos before but not enough to trigger me to realise at the time

We went down the medication path. We spent 10 weeks trying to workout how little gaviscon we could give to get her benefit of gaviscon without the constipation before admitting that my daughter did need the gaviscon and high dose omperazole and accepted a mild stool softener. She had this for regular for about a month and the occasional for another month.

In hindsight the tongue tie assessment we had probably wasn't good enough to assess if she had a tongue tie and I do wonder if she had a mild tongue tie. However her reflux is independent of everything and she hasn't grown out of it and is still highly medicated aged 3 with being upright and mobile and weaned has zero impact. Yes for a lot of babies there is a reason and my daughters allergies made it a lot worse but she had GERD in its own right and is a bigger problem for us than all 20 of her allergies!