Rachel, Carolyn, lactpals,

Rachel said
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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.

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