To the Babies I Couldn't Breastfeed ...

Frank About Feeding is using the month of May to share stories about mothers with tongue tied babies. They contacted me to see if I was willing to share my story. I said yes, here it is.































To the Babies I Couldn't Breastfeed ... 

... I still love you as though I did.

My daughter, Sage Malia, had a posterior tongue tie but it wasn't discovered until she was 2 weeks old and because my lactation consultant went away on holiday, right after she referred me to the infant feeding specialist for Cumbria, it wasn't taken seriously until she was 10 weeks old, at which point it was too late. 

I had the most magical birth experience with Sage, she followed the textbook and worked her way towards the breast within 20 minutes of being born. This was a shock to me because it took 48 hours to get Cyril to latch on and in the end he would only do it with a nipple shield. I remember thinking I would finally have the magical breastfeeding experience I had always dreamed of with no pain and a baby that just knew what she was doing. Before leaving the hospital I asked the midwife if she would check if my positioning and attachment were correct. She watched me for a minute and said it all looked perfect. The hospital was busy that morning, I was a second time mummy and my baby was latching beautifully, I was discharged a mere 12 hours after giving birth.

When we got home everything seemed just as it should. By day 3 my milk arrived and I resembled Dolly Parton, just as I did with Cyril. Unfortunately the cracked bleeding nipples also arrived. I remember thinking, I understand why I stopped breastfeeding Cyril and forgave myself for doing so, the pain was immense. My midwife dropped off an entire box of gelonet and I went through it in 24 hours. On day 5 they came back to weigh Sage and said my nipples were so bad I needed to rest them and express for 12 hours. I was relieved to have a break but completely panicked when they said Sage had lost more then 11% of her birth weight, how could that be? After 12 hours rest I was nowhere near healed and they said she wasn't opening her mouth wide enough so suggested I use a nipple shield. I hesitated to take their advice because when I used one with Cyril the midwives blamed the nipple shield on our breastfeeding struggles.  Since Sage knew how to latch it didn't seem necessary. Again she needed to eat so I took their advice. They looked inside her mouth to see if there was a tongue tie and said it all looked fine. I was then set on a strict feeding schedule. Breastfeed her from the left, express the right breast for 15 minutes and bottle feed her the expressed milk. Since she nursed for nearly an hour on one side and then I had to express for 15 minutes and give her a bottle I literally had a 15 minute break before I needed to start the whole process over again. I remember saying in my head, Ok you can do this just get to day 10, her weight will have increased and then you can stop all this expressing and bottle feeding malarky.

During those 5 days I barely saw Cyril. I remember hearing him scream, "Want big cuddles Mama, no don't want you Gaga, don't want you Daddy, want Mama." "Want Mama to put me to bed." "Want Mama to put baby down." The one night I expressed without feeding her and put Cyril to bed I cried as I sang him these lyrics "Soon enough you know I will be around but that ain't soon enough cause it ain't right now, I need you ..." In those dark moments I needed Cyril and he needed me. I craved the amazing bond we had created over the 2.5 years before Sage was born. The bond that felt like it was slowly slipping from my grasp, the bond that took me months to forge because of our traumatic birth and rocky start. The child that had a 90% organic diet was living off oven pizzas because I had no time to make him anything to eat. I was dead set on breast feeding even if it meant neglecting my toddler.

Fast forward 7 days and it was time to see if all the hard work paid off on the scales. Sage gained 5 ounces and was nearly back to her birthweight, I was instructed to stop expressing and just feed her on demand, hallelujah! I did a little dance out of the office as they discharged me from midwife care. I asked the midwife if I'd get mastitis and she said I'd be fine. The next day I had mastitis from abruptly stopping my expressing routine. I was prescribed antibiotics. Three days later Sage was spending more then an hour feeding during each session, passing out and the second I put her down she wanted back on again. I contacted every midwife, health visitor and feeding specialist I knew and tried to explain that she would only nurse when the milk let down and then pulled off screaming leaving me engorged. Finally, I contacted a private lactation consultant, Jill Asher.

She was the only one who mentioned a posterior tongue tie. She recommended we drive to Huddersfield to be evaluated by Milk Matters. However, there was a tongue tie specialist 10 minutes down the road at the infirmary who would be free so we decided to see her first. The specialist said she could see where the lactation consultant was coming from but they didn't perform grade 4 tongue tie operations at the hospital due to the risk of excessive bleeding. She thought the problem might be thrush and massively downplayed the posterior tongue tie, making me feel as though a posterior tie didn't even exist. We were put on a medication for thrush and told to carry on. I went to every breastfeeding support group that I could and cried because my baby was the only one that pulled off screaming while nursing, she literally couldn't get the milk out. No one believed me when I said she was tongue tied because they couldn't see the tie. They didn't know how to look for the other signs or manipulate the tongue to make the tie visible, I did.

The grief continued for 12 weeks. I carried on letting Sage nurse from both sides, when she screamed and pulled off I would express off both sides for a minimum of 30 minutes and then bottle feed her. I planned to exclusively pump but when my mom flew back to America this became impossible.  I cried and decided I would just let her nurse until my milk ran out. When she was 13 weeks old my milk was just about gone. The last time we breastfed we were both in tears. I was trying to force her to do something she wasn't capable of and I broke down. At that point I realised I had to do what was best for the entire family and neglecting my 2.5 year old son for the sake of a few ounces of "liquid gold" just wasn't going to fit into our lifestyle.

The day I exclusively bottle-fed Sage was a day of great relief for both of us. She's been smiling ever since. It took me several months to work through my disappointment and it preoccupied my mind a lot. I wanted to be that success story but wasn't. Now that I'm on the other side I realise that despite what the NHS and everything online says there really is no difference between bottle-fed and breast-fed babies. If you dive further into the medical research and actually look at reputable studies which eliminate the greatest amount of bias all you find is that breastfed babies might have one less case of diarrhoea in their first year of life. Sage is 8 months old and has never had diarrhoea so I can live with that.

The one thing I've learned about both of my experiences with my children is that parenting is not a one size fits all approach. I set unattainable expectations for myself before both children were born but only found peace once I was able to just let things be. I no longer see myself as a failure, in fact I'm quite proud of the mother I've become. 

Sage is nearly 9 months old and I'm happy to report that her frenulum has stretched on its own. No surgery, anesthesia or regret about my decision, just one happy mama that chose to go through months of pain and grief so her little peanut didn't have to.





The Science and Culture of Breastfeeding That Keeps Many Women Down


And please please visit this site if you're having breastfeeding issues. Posterior tongue tie causes more breastfeeding problems then anterior ties yet there are very few professionals who are trained in locating it in the UK.

Posterior Tongue Tie Information

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