Tongue Tie/Frenuloplasty Procedure

that was one cute baby! I've not ever watched this be done, thank you for posting the video!

Thanks for posting this

Youre welcome I found it fascinating

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i dont understand...why are they doing this?

This baby has what is called a tongue-tie. The frenulum (membrane string - feel it when you touch the roof of your mouth with your tongue) under the tongue is very tightly attached the the base of the mouth, and this means the tongue can't protrude, so the baby can't breastfeed well. Popular opinion and practice seems to swing back and forth between doing this procedure and not. Having seen that video it looks pretty darn good to me!

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I have watched this procedure, and have seen the results following it. When parent's came they were very nervous, anxious and stressed, as their baby had lost weight despite their best efforts to breastfeed them.

The Mum's very often have very sore and often cracked nipples due to the baby not being able to latch on properly.

After the procedure, which takes only a minute or two to perforn, the baby is taken back to Mum for a breastfeed, this is done partly to see how the baby latches on, but also due to the fact that breastmilk has an anaesthetic quality to it, so minimising any discomfort the baby may feel.

It is lovely to see the babies feeding brilliantly, and to see the look of relief on the Mum's face is just wonderful.

A follow up phone call is made the day after to check on the progress, and in all but a very tiny minority everything is fine.

This of course is only at the unit I work in, I can't speak for others, but I do know it isn't widely available.

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Student Midwife 2007
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All 3 of my children were tongue tied and had them snipped
It can be hereditary, as well as feeding problems the child can in some case not poke their tongue out, lick ice creams and have dental hygiene as they don't have the length of movement on their tongues they would have if they were not tied.

My children had problems feeding which disappeared after being snipped, one of them even had it done whilst he was a sleep and never woke!

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There's a dark side in all of us!

Sadly it's not. Which is a real shame as it is such a simple procedure and can sometimes make the difference between breast feeding and not!

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There's a dark side in all of us!

This was lovely to see. I know a bit about this as my little girl had a case of it, spotted by the midwives in the unit when I was having difficulty feeding (she was my 3rd - I thought it would be a piece of cake!). I was in agony and even though I am 100% pro-breastfeeding was actually contemplating putting her on the bottle, so desperate was I. Once it was diagnosed it was a complete performance trying to arrange to get it done. One of the midwives had seen how to do it and had requested to go on training but was not allowed. Officially, the procedure could not be done in Devon! They knew a GP who would do it, but we couldn't get hold of him, and another Trust who would charge £50!

Eventually we found a midwife in Cornwall who was happy to do it for no fee. So we had to drive 60 miles with a week old baby (I still remember - she stayed awake for the whole journey, just gazing about with her serious little face!) to get it done. Then the midwife sat her on her lap and I didn't even see what she did (couldn't bear to look, actually!) and it was done. She made a little yelp of outrage, then realised there was nothing to fuss about and I gave her a feed. We didn't look back and I breastfed her up to 10 months.

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