Lauren's Tongue Problem

Since Lauren was a few days old we noticed she favoured sticking her tongue out, as the months have gone by it has become an even worse habit. She even sleeps with her mouth open and her tongue out. I also couldn't breast feed for as long as I hoped for as she couldn't develop a good suction on me because of her tongue always sticking out and I was finding it stressful so I decided to move onto bottles. She also wasn't good with bottles but in the recent weeks we've noticed she seems to be drinking from them much better.

I mentioned it to my health nurse and she didn't seem concerned by it, I also mentioned it to my GP who didn't think it was a problem. I ended up asking my GP for a referral to a paediatrician to ask for their opinion. We went to see the Paediatrician who was present at Lauren's birth as we thought he was great in hospital. Unfortunately he wasn't as great as we thought when we saw him about Lauren's tongue. He seemed to dance around the subject and talk more about what milestones she will be hitting soon, even though we told him we were second time parents and knew very well about what to expect. He just told me to start feeding her solids and it will sort her tongue problem out...it did not. **Please pause for my very slow and dramatic eye roll. 

A friend of mine told me about another paediatrician who she said was amazing. I really did want a second opinion (or is it actually a forth opinion?), my gut (and my husband) were telling me to do it. This paediatrician was fantastic, he was great with Lauren and he asked me a million questions about Lauren and her birth. 

He is pretty confident it is due to her having her tongue tie cut. He never implied that he thought it was done incorrectly but he did wonder if it actually needed to be done at all. I didn't do my own research into tongue ties as a matter of fact I didn't even look in Lauren's mouth to see what it looked like. My baby wasn't even a minute old and the original paediatrician was telling us she had a bad tongue tie and he recommended cutting it. I'm far from being a medical professional, I make peoples nails pretty and rip hairs off ladies legs for a living, so I've got no clue! I trusted what he was telling us was correct. He said if it wasn't done there was a high chance of Lauren having speech problems in the future. So we went ahead with it, he came into the hospital and cut her tongue tie when she was 2 or 3 days old, shortly after that she started sticking her tongue out.

The new Paediatrician wants to reassess Lauren in 6 months time to see, if with time and more teeth that Lauren will stop doing it on her own, but if she doesn't stop the next step is to see an ear, nose & throat specialist. He also said if she does prefer having her tongue out that it may effect her speech which is why we chose to have it cut in the first place, so that was pretty upsetting to hear.

So Mum's-to-be or Mum's with babies who may have it, all I can say is do your research, look up photo's of what a tongue tie actually looks like, get more then one opinion if you're unsure and if it does really need to be done see a surgeon to do the procedure so it is done correctly, this was a big recommendation from my Paediatrician, he couldn't stress this enough that a surgeon should do it and have the right equipment on hand rather then a paediatrician or doctor doing it from their rooms. 

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