Challenges to Breastfeeding: Tongue and Lip Ties
By: Emily Bunch Izquierdo
Tags: Womens Health, Breastfeeding, Baby, Motherhood

Part I — My first daughter

When my first daughter was born in 2014, I was so excited to care for her and breastfeed her. Little did I know that what would follow would be the most difficult 11 weeks of my life.

After laboring for six hours and having a C section where I got the shakes so badly the anesthesiologist gave me an extra medicine to kind of knock me out, I woke up, and my husband came to the recovery area, and placed the most beautiful baby on my chest. My sweet daughter was squishy and snuggly and I couldn’t wait to try to breastfeed her. So I put her to my breast and then YIKES. Little daggers shot through my chest. I had no idea this wasn’t normal. Who knows what normal is after giving birth yourself for the first time? You’re exhausted, so you just do what the nurses and lactation consultants in the hospital tell you to do.

You feed the baby.

I told them it hurt.

They said it’s normal for it to hurt (it’s not normal for breastfeeding to hurt badly).

I cried.

They said it’s normal to feel overwhelmed.

I told my husband I didn’t know how I could breastfeed her anymore because it hurt too badly and I didn’t know what to do.

He said he didn’t know what to do either and he rubbed my shoulders while I cried and screamed in pain and tried to nurse her.

My nipples were cracked, bleeding, creased, you name it.

They were destroyed.

I got cream from the OBGYN.

No practitioner I saw ever mentioned why this could be happening.

I visited the lactation consultant at the pediatrician every few days for weeks.

She just kept telling me to get a deeper latch.

I kept trying.

And I kept crying.

I got mastitis.

No one searched deeper. Not even me, because I didn’t know what to do.

I’d estimate that during this time my daughter and I saw more than 7 lactation consultants and pediatricians combined as we rotated around the hospital and pediatric practice. Everyone just told me to keep trying.

Breastfeeding my first daughter was the most excruciating pain I’ve ever been through still to this day. And at this point I’ve had two C sections and two back surgeries.

No one, not a single healthcare provider I saw for 11 weeks mentioned that what I was going through wasn’t normal. They didn’t listen to my pain. They told me to kept trying. They noted my daughter’s slow weight gain, but they didn’t dig deeper. They noted my destroyed nipples, but they didn’t investigate.

I was hard on myself. I didn’t know why it looked so easy for everyone else. I got angry at why I wasn’t better at this, at what must be wrong with me.

And then I saw an angel one day while grocery shopping.

She was a former co-worker and she invited me to a breastfeeding support group.

Going to this group was the first time I’d sat with a group of other mothers breastfeeding.

It was the first time I’d seen other moms nurse, and the first time I’d seen that everything I was going through and was having to do to feed my little one was NOT normal.

I needed answers.

One afternoon when I got home from the group, I snapped a picture of my daughter’s mouth and sent it to the lactation consultant in charge of the group. She was so kind and easy to reach out to.

She said something NO ONE else had told me.

“I think your daughter has a lip tie.”

She couldn’t see inside her mouth in the picture, so I went with what she said, a lip tie.

I found an ENT and within a week of sending that wonderful lactation consultant group leader a picture, my daughter’s lip and tongue ties were clipped and my entire world changed.

From the moment her ties were clipped, breastfeeding was perfectly fine. It took time for my damaged nipples to heal, but my daughter could finally nurse correctly and it no longer hurt.

I was able to breastfeed my first daughter until she was one month shy of 3 years old, and I was pregnant with my second daughter.

These people saved my breastfeeding relationship with my daughter:

One friend who connected me to an amazing group of moms.

One lactation consultant who was knowledgeable about tongue/lip ties.

One specialist preferred provider.