Dentists and lactation consultants around the country are pushing “tongue-tie releases” on new mothers struggling to breastfeed.
Tess Merrell had breastfed three babies and never expected trouble with her fourth. But after a month of struggling with her newborn, she hired Melanie Henstrom for help.
Ms. Henstrom, a lactation consultant, identified a culprit: The infant’s tongue was tethered to the bottom of her mouth. It was a common problem, she said, and could be fixed with a quick procedure at a dentist’s office.
“It was touted as this miracle cure,” said Ms. Merrell, a high school soccer coach in Boise, Idaho.
Ms. Henstrom recommended a dentist, who in December 2017 cut under the baby’s tongue with a laser. Within days, the infant, Eleanor, was refusing to eat and had become dangerously dehydrated, medical records show. She spent her first Christmas on a feeding tube.
So this is absolutely a medical condition (ankyloglossia) that can occur and does at times require surgical intervention, but just doing it for every baby that has issues breast feeding is a bit of a stretch.
Stretch? It sounds like straight up medical malpractice. Performing any unnecessary procedure under the guise of necessity should always be viewed as malpractice. Yes, that means upselling “doctors” are committing medical malpracrice, but good luck punishing them when capitalism only rewards them.
Can we stop cutting up babies for profit already?
Well it sounds absolutely fucking ghoulish when you put it like that.
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Yep, totally medically unnecessary mutilation of children.
Just like circumcision!
If you are an American male, theres a good chance your parents decided to geld you quite literally because ‘everyone else was doing it!’
Male circumcision is bad enough, there’s no need to quite literally lie and pretend it’s castration.
was touted as this miracle cure
To be fair, when you have a baby that’s on their way to dying of malnutrition, and they turn around two days later and start thriving, it absolutely feels like a miracle.
I’m not at all shocked to learn the procedure is over proscribed, though. Save one desperate baby, and you probably start to feel really good about the whole process.
My two kids have both been born with this issue and having their tongue release helped immensely. We also wanted to get it over with, since leaving it may cause speech difficulties as they get older.
Yeah.
There’s a lot of folks ignorantly commenting here who haven’t held a baby who is struggling to get enough calories - both from a boob and from formula - equating tongue tie release with circumcision.
Is it over proscribed? In that is a medical practice that earns money, I’m 100% sure it is.
Is breastfeeding oversold as a one-size-fits-all panacea? Absolutely.
But anyone who has held a baby who was going through a terrifying struggle to maintain a healthy weight - both on and off boob - knows that tongue tie release is not optional for some babies.
One of my 3 had it.
In all honestly I think I needed it too but never happened.
You’re going to create a generation of Gene Simmons-es! You fools, you’ll doom us all to years of lame radio-friendly rock!
I don’t know why lasers need to be involved… it’s a very quick and easy thing to do, definitely helped my second son. Over before my wife knew it had started. Almost no reaction from baby.
Same here. It’s not a big cut. It’s a snip of a thin clear membrane that’s holding back the tongue from functioning properly. Baby hardly reacts. I’ve seen it done. Easy peasy. Problem solved.
Cheers
This was done to me. I have leftover skin flaps under my tongue that don’t bother me at all. Never even think about them. I do think it gave me a slight under bite due to my tongue pushing against my lower teeth.
