Hi All,

 

I have this mom I am working with - baby has a posterior tongue tie -
obvious frenulum - it does not extend all the way to the tip of the tongue
but does pull tight when baby tries to lift her tongue and baby can not
extend tongue to lower gum ridge - tongue does notch when she treis to
extend it.  Suck eval (with flow of milk) shows tongue 'snapping' back and
forth while baby tries to suck.  Mom in pain - hates pumping so does some bf
and some pumping - we worked on deep latch but mom is still in pain.  There
is less pain when the breast is more full.still trying to figure that one
out - I am really tired so maybe someone can enlighten me on that one
(probably a no brainer but I am just too tired right now).

 

So, mom virtually has to force the Ped (who claims to be BF friendly) to
refer to an ENT.  Ped was unwilling at first and told mom to 'keep trying to
latch deeper and maybe it will get better or just pump and bot
feed'..grrrr..Mom called back after 2 days and said refer or else and had to
argue with the advice nurses to even get a note sent to the Ped - they said
it wasn't important enough to send a message to the doc!  Mom threatens to
file a formal complaint.  So Ped refers to an ENT - mom reports him as VERY
young and clueless.  He looks at the baby for about 2 seconds and then tells
mom that her baby does NOT HAVE a frenulum!!!  He told her that the frenulum
was something that lies next to the large blue vein under the tongue.there
was simply nothing there to clip according to him.  Not only that, but this
young ENT told mom that frenulums simply aren't clipped anymore - there is
NO REASON to do so and it is a MAJOR procedure.blah blah blah.   This kid
has a VISIBLE frenulum folks.So mom leaves feeling beyond angry and so
disgusted with the medical establishment and is determined to just hang in
there as long as she can (This woman is amazing, btw!).  Mom and I are
beating our heads into that proverbial brick wall in tandem here.

 

Can you believe that tho?  So apparently (at least according to this ENT)
that webbing under the tongue is NOT the actual frenulum - there is
something else that should be there.hmm.makes you wonder if he was paying
attention in ENT school.

 

Luckily, I remember that I had a client a couple years ago who happens to be
in a position of importance within this particular health care system.  Her
baby had a tongue tie.  She has connections.  :-)  She was more than willing
to help - got right on it and called the mom herself.  So hopefully, they
can get baby in next week and get this taken care of.  

 

Will it NEVER end????  When will IBCLC's be given the opportunity to get
some sort of license that will allow us to be trained to do simple
frenotomies ourselves??  I mean, really - we are there, we know what we are
looking at - we know how it is supposed to be done - why can't we just do it
and take care of it then and there and spare everyone the hassle of fighting
for referrals only to be told that the baby doesn't have a frenulum or that
it simply isn't done any more????

 

Sigh..

 

Jaye Simpson, IBCLC, CIIM

Frustrated in Sac.

 

 

 

 

 


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