Cindy -

Could it be that the baby has a tight - well, I forget what it's called, but
it's the equivalent of the frenulum, the attachment of the upper lip to the
upper gum? There are some pictures & discussion of this in Barbara W-C/Kay
Hoover's BFing Atlas. Labial frenum, that's it! Does the baby have a little
crease across the top lip, parallel to its lip?

I was thinking about babies who do funny things with the mouths while
nursing last night; I'm having a really bad time with allergies, and the
inside of my mouth was all "itchy", and I kept eating strange stuff
(scratchy salty foods, super-acidic stuff like Cabbage Patch Kids) to try to
relieve the feeling - to scratch the itch. And I noticed that I was sucking
my tongue and trying to scratch the way-back of the nasopharynx w/my tongue,
which made me think about some of the babies I see who tongue-suck or
tongue-thrust or bunch their tongues up at the back of their mouths and
wonder if some of what they do is a similar response to not feeling "quite
right" in there.

Have you ruled out thrush? If a baby's mouth were sore from yeast (and you
say mom's nips are very sore), I can picture the kind of upper-lip-tucking
you describe as a way the baby is trying to "protect" its mouth or gums or
lips from discomfort...

Cathy Bargar RN IBCLC Ithaca NY

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