Someone said that since many of us concentrate on breastfeeding, we may be more concerned about tight frenulums than a doc who does not concentrate on breastfeeding. However, breastfeeding is not the only thing affected by tight frenulums! I have had 2 formula-fed infants in the last 2 months with very tight frenulums that could not suck properly. One was my patient from birth, and was clipped at 48 hours of age (mom by then very frustrated with trying to feed baby, dad with history of frenulum being clipped at a young age.) The other transferred care to me at 1 month of age, exclusively bottle fed, still not up to birth weight! Baby slid on and off bottle nipple and gagged a lot. I counseled the parents who decided on clipping it. Baby's feeding technique improved a great deal after. As someone else said above, it's really less of an ordeal than giving vaccinations. I simply hold the tongue up with 2 fingers and clip with a sharp scissors. I have the mom or dad hold a light for me, and they can see what I'm doing as well. Babies rarely bleed much, if at all, and have minimal crying. It's especially gratifying with a breastfed baby, who can usually go to breast right after and latch better. It mystifies me why some practioners prefer to ignore evidence in favor of opinion. Interestingly, though, my own oldest son is tongue-tied. Aside from an early round of sore nipples, we really never had any trouble nursing. He did tend to come off and on a lot, but was never grouchy about it, gained weight well, and weaned at 15 mos. No speech problems, either. When he was 5 I saw a picture of tongue tie in a textbook and asked him to stick out tongue -- sure enough, he can't. I wonder if there might be a subset of babies who do fine even with a tight frenulum? Jennifer Tieman, MD Family Physician Mom to 3, and new baby #4 expected 5/31/03 *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] 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