| Hi there
both my sons had tongue-tie to a certain degree. It's a genetic thing. I'm slightly tongue-tied. My mother is very tongue-tied.
The elder one could not latch on at all and in the end I used nipple shields for 6 months (exclusively breastfed him for the first 3 mths then slowly introduced formula). It wasn't easy, he was slow to gain weight, my milk supply kept dropping as he didn't milk the ducts very effectively (but I used motilium to improve my supply).
The second child could latch on but kept slipping off as his tongue couldn't extend very far to cup the areola. He ended up using his gums a lot as his tongue would slip away and my nipples were extremely traumatised! But then I found the solution of holding my breast with my free hand (using cradle-hold so one arm was under his head/neck/body, the other hand -opposite to the breast being fed on - was free). By taking the weight of my breast, it stopped it being dragged out of his mouth by gravity.
With both children I researched the surgical option of having the frenulum clipped. With the elder child, his tongue-tie was so tight, there was no frenulum to clip (it's a special type of tongue tie called type IV). With the second child, my paediatrician discouraged it. I wished I'd followed my instincts in the first couple of weeks after he was born, but my paed said he was barely tongue-tied because my son could extend his tongue on to his bottom lip. He couldn't extend beyond his lip though, and had the classic heart-shaped tongue.
By the time I was really desperate to have the surgery for my son, he was nearly 8wks old and it seemed a bit late for him to re-learn how to feed. then the "hold my boob" solution came to me and really helped. Plus, as the child grows, the mouth and tongue grow, the frenulum stretches a bit and it all becomes easier.
I hope that helps you a little bit. You are not alone. You're doing a great job and if you're worried about weight gain, you could consider topping up with formula or expressing your hind milk after a feed and topping up with that.
But don't worry about speech development etc. That's very rare. My elder son is now 2yrs 8mths and speaks very clearly. More so than many 3.5yr olds that I know!
HTH
Honkyblues  |