In my small practice, I don't see that many tongue-ties. This one was borderline, but seemed to "fail" Alison Hazelbaker's assessment tool, at which I don't consider myself at all skilled. At birth, he'd had trouble latching on. They came to me at 3 weeks with persistent mildly sore and mildly distorted nipples, trouble latching, the mom's insistence that the baby wasn't swallowing often - hadn't swallowed rhythmically in the past 3 days - and her belief that he was growing so well only because she was pumping for relief bottles to save her from exhaustion. Perceptive mom. In his first visit here, he didn't trigger a let-down until the very end, in a position the mother hit upon (though he sucked down a couple ounces total in dribs and drabs). We made some latch-on improvements, talked about clipping, and she went home using the new position. Swallowing frequency increased, one nipple stopped being sore, the days weren't quite so tedious, everything was moving in the right direction but not fast enough. She had his tongue clipped at 5 weeks. The next day he nursed to satiety in 10 minutes... and the day after that, everything was as bad as ever. No let-downs, sore nipples, frustrated baby and mother. I told her I thought her bad news was probably good news, and sure enough, as his tongue healed her nipples improved for good, his feeds shortened, he started throwing up (I assume because he's still adjusting to needing less nursing), and she even saw him "practice" losing the latch and drawing her in again, something he'd never been able to do before. An unremarkable story, but one more plug for clipping, and clipping early... and for not assuming that a well-positioned baby is swallowing! Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC Ithaca, NY www.wiessinger.baka.com *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html