I first heard the term “tongue tie” after Drake was born. We had a horrible experience breastfeeding — the pain was unbearable and I cried a few times.  Since I was a first time mom, I had every nurse who came through my room check our latch, as I assumed something had to be wrong for breastfeeding to hurt so bad. From the outside, they all said his latch looked fine. Still the pain continued, and his weight dropped significantly in our first week home. I was beside myself, torn between the pain and the need to feed my baby.  I hated nursing him and cried doing it, but I also realized he was failing and something was wrong with what we were doing.

After a week home and so many tears, I fought with my insurance company and had a lactation consultant come in to see what was going wrong. That’s when she noticed Drake’s tongue tie.  She noted how she only noticed it when he was screaming, as his tongue wasn’t pulling up like it ought to have. It didn’t prevent him from latching on, but because of the restriction, it made his latch very shallow which was the reason why I was in such pain — he was only clamping down on the front part of my breast even though from the outside appearance it looked correct.

Luckily our lactation consultant not only sent her own kids to the same pediatrician we used, but she also worked closely with them and was able to get us into an appointment that same day. At the tender age of one week, Drake had minor oral surgery to cut his frenum. The doctor said afterwards that his was quite thick and short, and was probably very much affecting his ability to nurse.

After the surgery nursing did improve somewhat; the pain was lessened, but sadly Drake and I never did get the hang of breastfeeding. While I can’t say for sure, I do attribute the tongue tie and the week we lost in the supply and demand of breastfeeding as part of the reason things never got better. After 3 months of breastfeeding, we switched to pumping and supplementing.  The experience made me quite aware of what an undetected tongue tie could do though, and armed with that knowledge I was prepared to make sure that never happened to us again.

ADVERTISEMENT

When Juliet was born, the first thing I asked before she came near my breast was to check for a tongue tie.  I was reassured multiple times that she did not have one. I posted about our breastfeeding journey in the past (in short we did have some early issues but were able to eventually breastfeed successfully).

At Juliet’s 2 month check up, her weight was starting to slide and the doctor said we might have to take a look at her 4 month appointment. In the month or so leading up to Juliet’s four month appointment, I had a nagging feeling that maybe weight gain wasn’t going as well as it ought to have been.  On my home scale I would often hold Juliet and weigh us together and then weigh myself without her, and the weight difference wasn’t as much as I had hoped or expected her to be with the amount of time I spent nursing.  I did realize that this wasn’t a totally accurate measure though, and held onto hope that some how the numbers were wrong.

Two weeks before Juliet’s 4 month appointment on a particularly cranky day, Juliet managed to scratch some of her cradle cap off which caused some bleeding, so I decided to take her to the doctor in case it got infected.  While at the doctor’s we got a quick weight check, and it was then my fears were confirmed. At 2 months Juliet weighed 9 lb 6 ozs, and at that appointment she was 10 lbs 2 ozs. In the span of almost 2 months, she didn’t even gain a full pound.  I was upset and disappointed and we spoke to the doctor about it.  She suggested since Juliet was already 4 months old to start her on some solids: oatmeal with olive oil mixed in, bananas, avocados, foods with natural fats in them to see if they could help her gain more on top of our regular nursing.  Juliet’s 4 month check up was in 2 weeks and she said that would be a good time to check up on progress as well.

Juliet started solids and it went pretty well. At her 4 month appointment she weighed in at 10 lbs 8 ozs, gaining 6 ozs in 2 weeks — not terrific but also not terrible. During her 4 month check up, the doctor asked me a few questions: Was Juliet laughing? Was she able to stick out her tongue to imitate me? Afterwards, the doctor checked Juliet’s mouth and told me that Juliet had a tongue tie.

I was flabbergasted. I told her how I asked every nurse in the hospital check her and was told she didn’t have one, and while breastfeeding had been difficult, we made it through our early troubles.  This was the same doctor that had fixed Drake’s tongue tie, and she told me how Juliet’s tongue tie was different from Drake’s. Drake had an anterior tongue tie, but Juliet had a posterior one.  And because tongue ties are usually an inherited trait that both of my children have been affected by, chances are that if I have other children, this might come up again.

Anterior tongue ties like Drake’s are toward the front of the tongue. They can be seen when the baby cries and the tongue is being held down to the mouth by a tissue membrane.  Posterior tongue ties are harder to diagnose, and can usually only be diagnosed by feeling as they are further back and sometimes under the membranes of the tongue. Tongue ties, both anterior and posterior, can affect breastfeeding, speech, eating, as well as numerous other things. This site is a wonderful resource for additional information about tongue ties.

Juliet had been feeding consistently every 2 hours around the clock for months, and yet her weight didn’t reflect the amount of time I spent nursing her.  Also in the last month or so she would often pull on and off for most of the feeding, which was irritating and also a little painful.  The doctor said all of these things might be attributed to her tongue tie, as she didn’t really seem to have a lot of mobility with her tongue.  She told me that because it was a posterior tongue tie, I would have to see a pediatric ENT to get it clipped.

After going through Drake’s tongue tie clip, which was a lot easier to do than what Juliet would have to go through, I was scared for Juliet.  The doctor said if I wanted to, I could wait a month and bring her back in to see if her weight would improve with the solids. But if after a month her weight didn’t increase significantly, it would probably be best for us to consider getting her tongue clipped as well.

So that’s where we are now. I talked to Mr. Chocolate about the pros and cons of what we should do. We could wait the month and if Juliet’s weight improves a lot, we might avoid having to go through with the clip. Tongue ties can affect speech however, and there is a chance we would have to get it clipped anyway if Juliet has speech issues; that might be traumatic to do when she is older as well.  I am unsure what would be best — do it when she is little in case we have to do it for speech later, or not do it and take the chance that she will gain weight successfully now and not have speech issues later.  I have a month to decide either way and I’m not sure at this time.

I never realized that this was the extent of her tongue’s extension