Having absolutely nothing better to do on a beautiful Memorial Day than clean
my office and read Lactnet, it occurred to me to do some math.  According to
the article in Otolaryngology some time back, 4.8% of babies are born with
diagnosable tongue tie.  (We'll just talk about the U S of A here).  Since
there are approximately 4,000,000 births a year, that is a total of 192,000
babies.  Of those, 25% have trouble breastfeeding (according to the article.
I disagree, but hey -- who am I?).  That is still 48,000 babies who have
problems breastfeeding per year related ONLY to tongue tie.  Now, let's
assume there are -- oh -- 8,000 actively practicing IBCLCs in the US -- which
means that each one of us will see at least 6 babies per year that have
difficulty breastfeeding because of tongue tie.  Any maybe YOU won't see any,
but your colleague will see 12.

Anyway you slice it -- that's a heck of a lot of babies that have a
congenital anomoly that interferes with normal feeding that are, for the most
part, being ignored.

Whew.  Enough math for one day.  Time to break out the watermelon!

Jan Barger, RN, MA, IBCLC -- Wheaton IL
Lactation Education Consultants
www.lactationeducationconsultants.com

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