Tongue tie

Anna had tongue tie, which probably made her suck less effeciently and my milk come late as a result. Because of this milk supply problem, she lost a lot of weight. But we didn’t know this until day 10 when a midwife from the hospital came to visit and heard my complaint about painful nipples and low milk supply. She told us to get the little one checked for tongue tie. We went to a NHS breastfeeding clinic nearby and found out that she had both anterior and posterior tongue tie. However the NHS wouldn’t do that if she wasn’t 50% on breast milk and it would take at least 2 weeks to get it sorted. As we still used a lot of formula supplement at that time and we really wanted to get it snipped assoon as possible to help the breastfeeding. We decided to go for a private practitioner and the cost usually ranges between £150 to £200. We quickly found a lady covering our area from the NHS website and arranged a next day visit with her, which was day 13.

The procedure was done very swiftly. It only took a few seconds, but I was too scared to look at. Anna screamed when it was done but was quickly calmed down when she was put on my breast. I think I cried even more than her. It didn’t bleed and only left a little blister. We were told to do some exercises with her tongue every 2 hours for the next 48 hours, which was hard work. Those exercises were to help prevent the re-attachment of the skin under the tongue. The 2 hour rule was unattainable as I hardly found time to sleep. After some research on Internet, it did seem that it is a myth about whether those exercises really help. We then felt a bit more relaxed and tried to do it at every feeding, i. e. every three hours. As breastfeeding worked shortly after that, it must be that the tongue tie procedures did help! I’m so glad that we got it sorted out as soon as I could, but wish we could have known it from day 1.