Rachel, Carolyn, lactpals, Rachel said <> Rachel, I too, share your concern and I can also see that Carolyn may too be feeling a little wary and yes, I believe he does have to be very careful on reason of why he carries out a clipping. I think that there is another factor that comes into this. To my knowledge he is the only person to undertake clipping in a very, very, very, very, wide radius in a heavily populated area of UK. So rare is this surgeon, that when I mention him to other Counsellors they want to know where he works because they know of no-one who will do this procedure in the rare event when they come across a truly tongue-tied baby who is having difficulty suckling the breast. Now, in the UK there are not that many Breastfeeding Counsellors/Supporters, let alone IBCLCs and I reckon that I know a goodly lot of them and certainly know how to contact all of them. It took the mothers that I know between 2.5 to 2.75 hours to reach this surgeon, not a journey undertaken lightly. I will stick my neck out and guess that there could easily be a 80 or more mile radius around this lone clipping surgeon. Clipping is now an unknown practice in the UK, where once in the long distant past it was an abused common practice with no understanding of why it was done. The pendulum has swung so far the other way that most HCPs believe it does not work/have no understanding of how it is done, believing it needs a full anaesthetic/why it should be done for the tiny percentage of breastfed babies. Two of these mothers were told to their face that there was no problem because they could feed the baby with ABM and why were they making such a fuss and causing a nuisance! I know of four women who have taken their children to him, two mothers have two children each with tongue-tie (familial), so already the numbers are notched up. I have seen the tongue of two of the babies - classic tongue-tie, mother with mangled nipples, loud clicking sounds at breast, etc., neither first babies, previous babies breastfed well, positioning re-evaluated to no avail. I have been a Counsellor for quite some time and the severely tongue-tied babies with feeding difficulties that I have seen, are tiny. It was sheer coincidence that I should see two of these babies in a two-week period, I know that the chances of it happening again are extremely slim. With kind regards, Helen M Woodman, National Childbirth Trust Breastfeeding Counsellor (NCT), Sussex Downs Branch. Storrington, (10 miles north of Worthing on the south coast between Chichester and Brighton) West Sussex UK. *********************************************** 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