Tongue-tie Gone!

Been a manic few weeks since I last wrote, however the good news is that on Friday we headed on down to the Countess of Chester hospital and Thomas had a frenulotomy. It wasn’t a quick 5 minutes though. Thomas didn’t like being wrapped up for a start, and then having a stranger put her finger in his mouth to simply see how high he could lift his tongue and whether he could/would keep it still to allow her to cut the frenulum below, well he just hated that. It sounded like he was screaming in pain, but she hadn’t even done anything at that point. After about 5 minutes (although it felt like ages), she had managed to cut about 50% of it, and unwrapped him and brought him over to us to calm down and for me to feed him a little to try and help calm him down.

Eventually, after a feed, a lot of singing (he likes Nellie the Elephant!), and a cheapo 60′s style dummy from the hospital shop, he finally calmed down and fell asleep. We then took advantage of him in his quiet/drowsy state and had the remainder dealt with quickly (although he still woke up but he was a bit less wriggly!).

He calmed down quite quickly after that, slept in the car on the way home and then fed and napped at home. At that point it didn’t seem like much had changed, although he wasn’t fighting the feeds so much. However from Saturday morning, he started to feed for England! We’ve averaged about 12 feeds a day (usually every 2 hours, sometimes every hour to compensate for a bit of sleep!) and he’s not screamed or pushed me away since. He does have a bit of a gripe if he has wind or is tired, but otherwise it’s a lot calmer and easier, and I look forward to feeding (well I do in the day, I wouldn’t mind a bit of sleep still!). He even has a big grin on his face when he knows he’s about to be fed, which is amazing to see

He had a 100% tongue-tie and his frenulum was quite thick too. It still annoys me that no-one picked up on it sooner, and also that my own stubborness, perserverance and lack of realising meant that I just put all of his feeding problems down to wind. I feel like we’re having to start all over again now, get him used to feeding, get him used to taking more milk in and therefore reducing the number of feeds a day, and hopefully get him back to have a decent sleep. Yes, in part that’s selfish as I want some sleep, but also because he’s still agitated and unsettled during a lot of the day, as he’s just not getting his full requirement of sleep each day.

However, one step at a time. His feeding is doing fantastic, and that’s a major step