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Tongue Tie

What is tongue tie?

If you lift the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth you may feel a little tightness under your tongue, this is a small price of skin (not normally very vascular in newborns) fromt he bottom of your mouth to the bottom of your tongue. If this piece of skin is very tight, travels the length of the underneath of your tongue, is attached to the end

You may discover by looking in a mirro that you have tongue tie, but not everybody has it.

Tongue tie is common in babies who cannot latch on or cause their mothers to have sore, cracked niples, making breast-feeding extremely difficult and stressful for both mother and baby.

Symptoms of tongue tie in babies could be:

Fractiousness and generally unsettled
Bobbing on and off the breast
Latching on and then crying
'faffing' at the breast
oral thrush
A baby that feeds very often or for hours (norammly they would feed efficienlty for around 45 minutes
Baby who sucks at the breast and then falls alseep
Wind which may lead to colic
Reflux
It could prevent the baby from attaching efficiently to the breast. This is due to a combination of the baby failing to open its mouth widely, the tethered, short tongue not covering the lower gum and the disordered movements of the tethered tongue when sucking.
Your baby may slip off the breast or chomp on the nipple with both gums and then slip off completely. As a result, the baby is not breast-feeding, but is nipple feeding, which is inefficient and can be excruciatingly painful causing cracked and/or sore nipples and can lead to most women giving up on breastfeeding altogether.

Mothers may experience: Nipple thrush, damaged nipples, soreness when latching, discomfort when baby is feeding.

What can you do?
Firstly, ensure you see a tongue tie release qualified professional. they dont have to be a breastfeeding consultant or lactation consultant as well, but a lot of them are as tongue tie in babies can seriously affect our efforts to breastfeed successfully.
Generally, GPs, Health Visitors, hospitals and sometimes breastfeeding cousellors are not not to recognise tongue tie or may tell you there's nothing there to worry about. This is where you must ensure you see a person trained in tongue tie.

What will a professional tongue tie release specialist do?
They may watch you latch your baby on and feed your baby and check for other issues before checking tongue tie. They will listen to the behaviour of your baby and what is troubling you or what you feel is affecting baby feeding efficiently.

They may either put hygienic gloves on or use a hygienc gel ont heir hands, they will open baby's mouth or if baby is crying will look to check tongue tie when their mouth is open.

Your professional will point out tongue tie and how it may affect feeding or explain the symptoms you've been expeirncing. Sometimes its clear-cut and sometimes its not straight forward Yes or No as to how it's affecting you feeding your baby.

You need never have to make a decision regarding releasing your bay's tongue tie right there and then. You should be given the oportunity to think about it and talk with your partner about it.

If your baby does have tongue tie, what are your options?
You could change a coupleof small things if the tongue tie isn't affecting your babys weight or if you're willing to persevere. Some babies feed successfully with tongure tie and other babies struggle to take enough of the breast to milk it correctly to get the amount of milk they want or need.
Tongue tie release professionals can offer to release your baby's tongue by performing a cut of the skin under the baby's tongue to allow the tongue's free movement. release by a professional costs between £90-£130 depending on the professional and where int he UK that you live.
You could get a referral to southamptom hospital which is where training for tongue tie release takes place. They charge £90 but this could be claimed back through your local authority.
There may be a peadiatric surgeon at your maternity hospital where you had your baby who could do the release.

What happens during the procedure?
Normally you will not be in the same room, it's not nice to hear your baby cry (often just because they're not with you and a strangers finger is in their mouth rather than because of the procedure).
Most of the time they will wrap your baby and support it's head to keep it still. They use blunt, sterile scissors to cut the tie under the tongue and then apply pressure for any spots of bleeding

What happens after the release?
You might experience some blood on or around your breast when your baby feeds; this is completely normal and should subside. These professionals are genrally lactation consultants and will support for for a hour or so afterwards to help you get the hang of feeding at the breast with a correct latch.
A few days later you may notice a small white diamond shape up your baby's tongue, this normal healing of the area.
You should have your bayb;s tongue stretched slightly - any little area that is release may feel a bit tight so it's good to stretch it out slightly.

We have a tongue tie release and lactation consultant in our Directory.

CranioSacral Therapy for babies. For birth trauma