Dawn--
I had my first experience with a tongue sucker a few months ago.  That baby
gave all the signs of being properly latched on and even swallowed--only
problem was that you could pull the baby off!  Luckily the mother had a
copious milk supply and could express easily.  I instructed the mother to
attempt breastfeeding, pump and feed to the baby (saw them day 2)  8-10 times
per day and take baby to MD for wt check.  Well, the baby had lost 1 lb in 3
days!!! Scary.  Even scarier was that the mother was told to bring the baby
back in 1 week for a weight check.  (Imagine how much the baby would have
weighed if the loss  had continued.)  I won't go into all the gory details,
but the mother called me on Day 5 to say that the baby was nursing and that
praying had fixed the problem (that was when I found out that she was not
planning to re-check the weight for another week.). (I also had tried
unsuccessfully to reach her many times that week because I was unsure about
her reliability--they had a 2-story house and she could not run the steps to
the phone, so did not answer....) The story ended happily (whew!) with the
baby regaining all the lost weight plus a few ounces when I saw the mother
again (day 8).

In discussing this with another LC in Ohio, she noted that all of the babies
she had seen with the problem were African-American (so was this baby!)

I think the scariest part for me was thinking that I was observing
breastfeeding while this little fake-out artist was happily sucking his
tongue.               Martha Grodrian Brower RD LD IBCLC