The emotional side of tongue-tie revisions

The tongue-tie business is booming, states a recently published investigative article in The New York Times, as diagnosing and cutting these “oral ties”, often pushed on new mothers to improve breastfeeding success, has become a niche industry worth millions. And though complications from tongue-tie surgeries performed on infants are rare, they can happen. I shook with anger and tears as I read the original article, and I felt sick to my stomach for hours after reading. 

It’s an easy article to get mad at while reading, whether you’ve had children or not. The idea that people would purposely prey on new parents is disheartening and disgusting, to say the least.

While the Times article focused primarily on the most negative outcomes that some children have experienced from getting alleged tongue ties cut, I felt that it skimmed over the raw vulnerability of new parents and the emotional side of deciding to get a tongue tie or not.

It skimmed over the fact that as a new parent, you don’t know what you’re doing. That those first few weeks and months are really tough. You’re sleep deprived, your brain is foggy, hormones are out of whack and all you want to do is make sure your child is thriving. For first-time parents, these feelings are only amplified because you really don’t know what you’re doing.

It skimmed over the emotional anguish that you feel when you want to help your baby but don’t know how. The fact that you’ll try anything if it seems like it’ll help your baby, that if something seems reasonable and could be helpful, you try it. And if you don’t try it, you’ll feel a crushing amount of guilt and question your ability to be a good parent.

It skimmed over the trust parents put in professionals that are supposed to be acting in the best interest of their children, and that the reliance on the likes of lactation consultants, pediatricians, pediatric dentists to steer them in the right direction is especially high early on.

So with all of this in mind, when a new parent is presented with the suggestion to get a tongue-tie revision for their baby, it’s no wonder that so many are getting it done.

I was one of those parents. My daughter latched quickly when she was born, but was struggling to put on weight. My husband and I turned to a lactation consultant, who quickly said she had a tongue tie and that she should get it fixed as soon as possible if I wanted breastfeeding to work.

And so we did. A few hours and $600 out of pocket later, the “problem” was solved. 

The next day we went to our pediatrician for a weight check in and told her what we had done. She told us it was likely something that wasn’t necessary, and that she wished we had called her and come in before doing the procedure.

As luck would have it, the pediatric dentist she worked the most with had one opening that afternoon, and then nothing for two weeks. If we’d like to get it taken care of we would need to act quickly.

But what was I supposed to do? My baby wasn’t gaining weight, and two professionals (the lactation consultant and the dentist) both told me they had a solution that would help. It’s an impossible place to be in. I still have no idea what a true tongue tie looks like, and had no way to verify if what they were saying was true or not. 

It felt like the choice was an impossible one—say no and feel guilt and anxiety that I was purposely hindering my baby from feeding, or say yes and potentially purposely cause my child pain unnecessarily. 

Looking back on things, of course we should have called her. We should have taken more time to research and understand different options, risks and potential outcomes. We should have questioned the “luck” that a doctor would have one opening and that it just so happened to be the same day.

I believe the lactation consultant and pediatric dentist were counting on me being in a vulnerable spot, and preyed on that fact. I was beside myself with concern for my child and in my hormonal, postpartum, sleep-deprived state desperate for a way to help her.

My family is lucky that my daughter had no complications from the procedure. It didn’t help with breastfeeding, though. We moved to exclusively formula feeding two weeks later as it was probably more of an issue with my supply than with my daughter’s ability to breastfeed.

Confronted with the same situation again, I’m not sure what I would do. Sounds obvious, right? That I’d say no. But that’s how this profit-focused enterprise persists. 

I applaud the Times and other outlets for writing about the increase in tongue-tie procedures and questioning whether they are needed or not, but it makes me sad and angry that it won’t stop what’s happening.

There will always be a fresh crop of new parents in the exact situation that I was in. It’s easy to rationalize that maybe you aren’t being preyed upon, that maybe your child does legitimately have a tongue tie. This is especially true when you’re being advised by a professional and have no idea how to validate whether what they’re saying is true.

I will always question whether my husband and I did the right thing, and will always question whether I put my daughter through unnecessary pain. I was just trying to do what I thought would be best for her with the information I had. I’ll continue to operate that way, but will use my tongue-tie revision experience as reason to pause before committing to anything else in the future.