Lisa, I will be eager to hear what you turn up. My youngest (now 7 mos and a champion nurser) was this kind of a tongue curler, and I believe that it may have indicated that she was sucking her tongue in utero and had gotten in the habit. She did in in the birth room, after a quick and easy and unmedicated birth -- no suctioning, no agressive latching help, all quite lovely really. After she learned that she needed to drop the tongue to get any milk, there was still a long uncomfortable (for me!) period in which, after the main rush of milk was over and she was down to comfort sucking, she would try to curl up her tongue (cozily, in her opinion, I imagine), resulting in the nipple getting partly squeezed out and the latch hanging off the end of the nipple -- ouch. She sucked this way very reliably when relaxed, or when majorly stressed, but when calm & hungry she learned to do it ok -- and in fact she did NOT do it to defend against the nasty firehose-in-the-face of oversupply, which she really hated. That's why I think it was an earlier-learned comfort habit, rather than a defense mechanism. Even now, when she is deeply asleep and fully relaxed, if you open her mouth gently you can see the tip of her tongue at rest against her palate, curved right up there. Elisheva Urbas, NYC *********************************************** 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