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Home › Articles › Overcoming Difficulties › Tongue-tie By Any Other Name

Tongue-tie By Any Other Name

Does Ankyloglossia Affect Breastfeeding?

By Ann Calandro, RNC, IBCLC

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Angelia Thompson, a registered nurse who successfully nursed her first two babies, had trouble nursing her third baby. Thompson asked her lactation consultant for some assistance with latch-on. Despite careful positioning and latching, she noticed that breastfeeding did not feel the same as it had with her first two babies. When her son went in for his first weight check, he was not gaining weight well.

"Breastfeeding my third child was more painful than with the first two," Thompson says. "The latch-on was particularly more painful. I had to reposition the baby often, and sometimes I had to hold my breast throughout the entire feeding to decrease the pain. Also, my milk did not come in as much in the beginning. I had to nurse and then pump after each nursing during the day to increase my milk supply. At a week of age, I took my baby to a pediatric dentist, who clipped my baby's tongue. I put him to the breast immediately following the clipping. There were no adverse effects. It bled only slightly after the clipping, but nursing stopped the bleeding completely. I immediately felt a difference with nursing – no pain. I couldn't believe it. I'm glad I had it done. I would recommend it to other nursing moms anytime for their comfort and peace of mind."

By the Book
Lactation consultants have long been frustrated because physicians rarely encourage parents to seek help for tongue-tie, even if it becomes apparent that things are not going well with breastfeeding. Lactation consultants are very familiar with tongue-tie and the problems it may cause.

While our literature and resources frequently address this problem, medical literature rarely discusses tongue-tie. In the past, medical textbooks stated that clipping a tongue-tie is unnecessary. Indeed, it is not necessary for bottle-feeding success in most cases. When many of the textbooks were written, bottle-feeding was the norm in our culture. Times have changed.

Alison Kay Hazelbaker, MA, IBCLC, CST, has written a guide to assessing tongue-tie for health care providers called *The Assessment Tool for Lingual Frenulum Function

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