I’m a new mom, a first-time mom, a doing the best I can mom. I only know what I know and can’t anticipate everything or even know to ask about things I know nothing about. I am sure you or people you know who are parents, feel the exact same way. You know what you know and you do the best you can.

Something I knew absolutely NOTHING about that had a profound impact on my new mom experience, from the instant my son was born, were tongue and lip ties. My son was born with both a tongue tie and a lip tie. His tongue tie (ankyloglossia) was classified as moderate (2 out of 4) with limits on mobility. His lip tie was an upper lip tie (upper maxilla) which restricted the ability of his lip to flange and fully extend. We didn’t know he had these ties until he was 6 weeks old.

6 weeks of not knowing this as a new mom with round the clock feedings. 6 weeks of post-partum hormones, sleep deprivation, physical recovery, and basically losing my mind. The constant battle of trying to do a “natural thing” of breastfeeding, trying to bond with my son, and failing time and time again. 6 weeks of having a hungry and upset infant who had to deal with a mixture of breastmilk and formula. 6 weeks of trying out different formula because some gave him terrible reflux, constipation, or gas which impacted his sleep and our sleep. The first 6 weeks were not at all what I was expecting as a new mom.

My husband stepped in and got me connected with a lactation consultant. Thank God because I was not thinking straight and had it in my head that “I can do this and I am going to do it” even though the results were showing that I actually couldn’t do it and both my son and I needed help. Our lactation consultant was the kindest, gentlest, and most loving woman. She came to our home and examined both myself and my son. I was surprised that she examined my son because I felt like it was entirely my fault that I wasn’t able to feed him.

As she looked at Jason, she immediately identified the tongue and lip ties. She said, well this makes a lot of sense because Jason has physical limitations which means he actually cannot latch correctly without help. That’s why he is chomping on you and is hungry – he physically can’t move his mouth the way he needs to.

To say that I ugly cried would be a huge understatement. To say that I had a weird sense of relief and mom guilt would be pretty accurate. My husband and I quickly pivoted from an ah-ha moment based on this realization to a spinning mind trying to figure out what this new-found issue is going to mean. How can we help him? What should we do now? Why wasn’t this found when he was born or in the multiple follow up visits we’ve had? Can I even breastfeed my son? Is there a surgery to fix this? Will he be able to talk?

Our lactation consultant said there is an opportunity to do a laser surgery to correct both his tongue and lip ties. We asked her about the benefits and drawbacks of the procedures and she said the research is almost 50/50 split on the surgery and the benefits. Some benefits were a greater ability for latching which would support breastfeeding, reduce the air he was sucking in, and improve his reflux. She also said improving his mobility with a surgery would improve his ability for the future such as drinking from a straw, eating solid foods, and talking. Some drawbacks of the surgery were the potential risk of the skin reattaching if we did not complete the post-surgery exercises, he will likely eat less directly after surgery due to pain, and he could actually outgrow some of the issues we are seeing right now. She shared that as his teeth come in and his jaw develops, that he may not have many issues with either his tongue or lip in the future.

Both Joe and I weren’t fully onboard with doing surgery on our son. He was only 6 weeks old and who knew if he could overcome this on his own? We talked about some other options that wouldn’t require surgery and one option was to do mouth exercises with him. Yes, there is such as a thing as mouth exercises. We also had to talk about how we wanted to feed our son and these options sucked. Option 1 – keep trying to directly breastfeed. Option 2 – Exclusively pump to reduce the pain and stress for both Jason and myself. Option 3 – Transition Jason to formula.

Joe and I both had wanted our son to be breastfed. I wanted the experience of bonding with my son and actually, directly breastfeed him. In all of our conversations about being parents it never once occurred to us that I wouldn’t be able to breastfeed our son. I was devastated by this realization – if I wanted to directly breastfeed my son it would mean pain and high levels of stress for me and partial feeding success for our son who would be continuously hungry. It also meant that my supply of breastmilk would never fully come in and I wouldn’t be able to produce enough anyways. So double feedings or even triple feedings (breastfeed, pump, and formula) were our future reality if I stuck with breastfeeding. My mental sanity could only take so much.

Together, my husband and I made these couple of decisions:

1. Our son would not have laser surgery to eliminate the tongue and lip tie. We chose the path of his own physical development instead of surgery.

2. We would support our son with mouth exercises to get more mobility in both his tongue and lip.

3. I had to let go of the idea I could directly breastfeed my son. It just wasn’t going to happen. Instead, I would exclusively pump. This made a huge difference in our son’s food consumption, in his reflux and constipation, and his sleep. It was the right decision at the time for our son and I had to transition my mindset and routine to pumping.

In moments like these, I truly feel like a parent. Someone who is responsible for making the hardest, least selfish decisions for my son to thrive. 6 weeks into motherhood with hard truths and decisions made for the better of our entire family. Nothing more humbling than that.

When my friends have been pregnant and they ask me about delivery and breastfeeding, I always talk to them about my son’s tongue and lip ties. No one talked to me about it and it had the most profound impact on my son and my experience in those survival weeks of post-partum.

 Legit advice from me to you:

1. If you are about to deliver, then add this to your hospital checklist: Ask the Hospital Pediatrician to look at your child’s mouth for both tongue and lip ties.

2. If you just delivered and are about to go to your Pediatrician for the first couple of follow ups: Ask your Pediatrician to look at your child’s mouth!

3. If you have a newborn and are struggling with latching: See if your insurance covers a Lactation Consultant and find one to examine your child. If your insurance doesn’t cover it, then see if you can budget to pay for even a single consultation. It is worth every penny!

4. Lip and tongue ties impact babies who are both breastfed and bottle-fed. This physical impairment can be a game changer if you know about it and make modifications to help your infant succeed.

Once you get this figured out, you can make a game plan. For us, our game plan transitioned from Mama’s body to bottles and bottle warmer. Our son had to learn how to properly latch even with a bottle. We learned that tucked in lips were a big no no because that means he is gulping air with the milk and will have more reflux and gas. We also learned that clicking noises while he sucked the bottle as another no no – meaning his jaw was doing more work than his tongue and we had to correct that. The good and bad of this was the amount of practice we got with him because 6-week-old infants eat often! The mouth exercises with tongue movement and lip flanging helped a ton and he got really really good at latching correctly to the bottle.

I’m fast-forwarding now to when Jason was 6-months-old and we started solid foods. Leading up to this point, I was a little worried about how solid foods would go. There was a concern that he may have a dribbly lip because of his ties. That was absolutely NOT the case. He was a champ when eating solid foods. He could maneuver the food into his mouth with his hands, on the num num spoons, and in the pouches that had homemade purees. I mean, he was a complete mess because he was very uncoordinated and playing with food. But he was not a mess because of his lip or tongue ties. YAY!!

As we weaned Jason from bottles and he ramped up eating solid foods, he got more and more practice with moving his lips and tongue in new ways. We transitioned him from nipples on bottles to straws – we completely skipped sippy cups. We thought straws were a lot more practical and encouraged more tongue and lip movement than a sippy cup (weird to think about right?). From straws we introduced just an open cup for fluids and he does a great job with that too. Our son is a great eater and drinker even though he still has the tongue and lip ties. He eats like a little man-child, it is kind of disgusting how much food he can eat.

Fast forward again to Jason’s first dentist appointment at 12 months old where we wanted his tongue and lip ties to be evaluated by a Pediatric Dentist. We learned so much at this appointment! Here is the most mind-blowing thing ever… Ready?

When your tongue is resting, it actually rests on the roof of your mouth and connects with nerves in your mouth that link to self-soothing and calming neurons in your brain. Since my son has a tongue tie, his tongue doesn’t actually reach the roof of his mouth to support this self-soothing mechanism. You may have guessed it, my son sucks his fingers. He does this to touch the roof of his mouth for the self-soothing mechanism.

Mind blown?? Mine sure was!

As the Pediatric Dentist examined his mouth, we asked about the current development of his teeth, roof of the mouth, and his jaw. She did say that the roof of his mouth was a little narrow due to the finger sucking but everything else looked good. No need for surgery at this time. Whohoo!! We did another check up at 18 months old and same result – no need for surgery!

Fast forward to 2-years-old now and Jason is eating and drinking well and he is talking. We are working with him on articulating his words more and trying to add more range to his vocabulary, what parent isn’t? We have another Pediatric Dentist in two weeks and I fully anticipate no need for surgery at that time either.

For us, this is working out really well. For others, you may be considering the surgery to a tongue or lip tie. The decision is incredibly personal and whatever you decide, you did the right thing. I am hoping this information was helpful to you or you can even pass it along to someone you know. I wish I would have had an idea about this when I was pregnant and planning my breastfeeding journey. This just would have been a good thing to know about. Check out my next blog, posting on April 18th on how my husband and I helped Jason with speech even through his tongue and lip tie barrier.