Lip tie

I'm raging mad.
Today I found out about a condition in babies which can cause a poor latch when feeding, and lead to serious difficulties with breastfeeding. It's called upper lip tie. Like tongue tie, it can mess up latch and lead to poor milk tranfer, lack of weight gain in baby, pain for mum and suffering for both.

Guess what, both of my girls have it. The severe type at that. That's the one where the tie goes from in the middle of the top front teeth to the upper lip.

Now, when I was a new mum, breastfeeding wasn't at all off to a good start. I really struggled, and having had a good friend who was also a health visitor and had drummed into me to get support for every.single.feed in hospital, I sought support. Midwives, volunteers, health visitors, support groups, online forums, books. I did it all. And still I was in agonising pain for 8 weeks, and still my baby never seemed satisfied. I have pictures of her with eyes so tired of crying, crying that was put down to colic. I had to call Crysis even, I didn't know what to do anymore. We had days where she cried for hours and nothing would soothe her. At 12 weeks I caved in and supplemented with formula, I could not see my baby be hungry any longer.

At no point was tongue tie/lip tie mentioned or indeed checked. I only found out about tongue tie when my second was born. And only now, I found out about lip tie.

Lip tie does not necessarily lead to difficulties breastfeeding, but it may because it can restrict the movement of the mouth and lead to a shallow latch, which in turn means milking the breast doesn't work so well. I had no major issues with my younger girl, she fed frequently and was also slowish gaining weight but she was always happy after feeds and clearly not going hungry. There was also clearly a lot of output the other end. As for me, I had no pain or soreness at all with her. Both have the exact same severity of lip tie -so in one case it made life really difficult, in the other it didn't have an impact (though I wonder if it may have had an impact on her reluctance to take to solids).

So in this anger at the omission of the medical profession to look my baby in the mouth instead of praising how well I was doing and ignoring the obvious signs of something not being right (my instinct had always told me, but I didn't know the tell tale signs of insufficient milk transfer then), here's my shout out to anyone who ever struggles with breastfeeding: read up on tongue ties and lip ties, and how to remedy. It might be what's wrong and it often goes undiagnosed. The snip is quick and easy.

I'm angry that I was sent to baby massage class to help with the colic (or improve my bonding with baby), rather than remedy what was really wrong. There was lack of output the other end, a baby who looked forever tired and kept falling asleep at the breast but who would never stop suckling because she wasn't full. I nursed 12 out of 24 hours for 6 months. I was exhausted. I was in pain. I told so many people and nobody, yes, nobody took it seriously.

What is beyond me is why babies aren't check as a matter of course. It only takes a minute, and can avoid months of suffering.

Postscript: Here are some of the best resources on lip tie I found online. Lip tie doesn't have to mean difficulties with latch, but it can, especially because it can come hand in hand with a posterior tongue tie (which is hard to spot and often overlooked).

http://thefunnyshapedwoman.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/introducing-maxillary-labial-frenulum.html
http://www.plus2point4.co.uk/2011/07/19/breastfeeding-with-a-lip-and-tongue-tie/
http://mothernurturebreastfeeding.com/tongue-tie-lip-tie-and-frenotomy/
http://www.brianpalmerdds.com/pdf/Bfing_Frenum03.pdf

Early baby days

You can't help but compare. I guess it's human nature and sometimes I feel terrible doing it, but really, there's no judgement involved in the comparisons I make and I try my best to let Cubling know about it. Cubling was a colicky baby, and her personality from the start was on the energetic side. It's joyful watching her now, she is such a forceful little girl, with so many ideas, so much energy, so much that amazes us every single day. As a baby, without the ability to communicate other than through crying, it was a hard road to be travelling on - for all of us.

Consider the scene of the first bath: with Cubling, we tried to entice her with dimmed lights, a warmed up living room, gas fire on, relaxing music in the background, everything at the ready, candles lit. And she screamed the house down. Not a single bathtime was enjoyed in those early days. Evenings from 5pm were filled with inconsolable crying (and we tried, oh lordy, we tried to console her). I felt guilty not for being a bad mum, but for causing her so much suffering by simply having had her.

Now look at Snowflake, a picture of bliss and curiosity as we gently lower her into the baby bath, which we've set up on the kitchen table so I don't have to bend down. We're not particularly organised, not everything goes smoothly, there is only dimmed lights, no other enticement. She's clearly enjoying it.

Snowflake also sleeps a lot. Cubling was good at keeping herself awake all day and evening, getting increasingly overtired and fretful. Snowflake sleeps. Mostly anyway (we do get overstimulation too on occasional days). She sleeps such long stretches that I worry, and that I wake her to give her a feed. I know I should just enjoy it while it lasts, but if you're used to a baby who sleeps for 30 mins max, and never goes more than 2 1/2 hours between feeds, a 4 or even 6 hour sleeping stretch is rather mindboggling.

Which neatly brings us onto the feeding. With Cubling, it was so bloody hard. I was sore beyond words, she fed forever and then again. She never seemed contented after a feed, didn't poo and generally didn't give me all those ticks to assure me that she was getting enough. She clusterfed every single evening, and I never ever saw milk. There was no posset, no vomit, no milk leaking out the side of her mouth. Now look at Snowflake - she feeds quickly, efficiently, goes sometimes for long stretches between feeds, but other times also clusterfeeds (not too often). When she does feed, she likes to feed a lot and often overdoes it, so there's a lot of milk making its way out. She comes off herself, looks contented, the last milk drop dripping out of her mouth. There are plenty of wet nappies, regular dirty ones. I don't monitor frequency or length of feeds, and above all, I don't worry. Did I mention that I'm not sore? The discovery of pain free breastfeeding, I never thought it did actually exist. To be fair, I was a little bit sore when on day 1, Snowflake initially was a reluctant feeder (due to c-section delivery and being mucusy) and I had to hand express - that did hurt. But as soon as she latched, all was fine.

It's not all roses though - Snowflake suffers from wind and often cries when awake. We have had 2 long clusterfeeding nights, and one whole day where she was fretful and couldn't get herself to sleep. And while she sleeps a lot, this will only happen if I carry her - put her into the pram and she'll be awake within 10 minutes.

But still, it's oh so good not to have to worry about milk supply or what the heck is wrong with an incessantly crying baby. There are those who say it's because we're more relaxed this time, all I can say is that personally I'm anything but relaxed, simply because there's two little ones now. It kind of relaxes me though that feeding is clearly going well. It feels like all the hard work last time is finally paying off, and breastfeeding is truly the easy option.

##Photo: Snowflake is sporting a lovely handknitted cardigan by J, and this is the most likely the one and only face on photo for the blog, so enjoy!.##