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Care Opinion

Tongue Tie Division

Posted By Gillpops

"Tongue Tie Division"

About: Royal Hospital for Sick Children (Yorkhill)

(as a parent/guardian),

My baby boy is 4 weeks old now and was born with a Tongue Tie at the tip of his tongue. He cannot stick his tongue out at all and now that he is older and becoming more active as a result of limited movement he has started to choke himself. He also finds it hard to feed on his bottle. I literally have to hold his head to stop him making the slightest movements so that he doesn't loose his grip (meaning I cannot let anyone else feed him) when any one tries to help feed him he becomes windy and cant finish feeds which then makes him extremely unsettled.

I have tried for the last 4 weeks to get a referral to have the simple 5 minute procedure carried out for him as this is also causing me a great deal of anxiety worrying that in the long run he will have to have it done at some point and it will not be such a simple procedure then. It appalls me that if my son was breastfed then he would get this done with no hassle yet I am fighting to have this done and no one will entertain me because he does not fit the guidelines. We should all be treated as individual cases not diagnosed by a set of guidelines.

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Responses

Response from Lorna Fairlie, Patient Experience, Public Involvement Project Manager, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde 8 years ago
Lorna Fairlie
Patient Experience, Public Involvement Project Manager,
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde

I work in a small team in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde which seeks to involve patients and carers in the work of the NHS. The biggest part of my role is in managing feedback projects across the Board area, one of which is Patient Opinion. It is my job to give our patients and carers the opportunity to give us feedback, and to make sure that this is passed to the right people to help us improve the services we provide.

Submitted on 28/07/2015 at 11:49
Published on Care Opinion at 12:04

Dear Gillpops,

First of all, congratulations on the birth of your baby boy! This is such an exciting time for you and your family, but I am sorry that things haven’t quite gone as smoothly as hoped with feeding your baby – I can appreciate how frustrating this will be for you.

You mention that you have been trying to get a referral for the procedure to divide your baby’s tongue tie – it would be helpful to know what route you have gone down to get this referral. We would suggest that you talk to your GP or Health Visitor about this again, using all of the information you have given in this post here. Every referral is made by a health professional who will decide whether or not the procedure is necessary for the baby (for example, sometimes a tongue tie is quite mild and doesn’t have any effect on the baby’s ability to feed, so we wouldn’t carry out the procedure to divide it). I would like to reassure you that every case is looked at on an individual basis and is absolutely not related to whether a baby is bottle or breast fed.

As the next step, I would again encourage you to talk to your GP or Health Visitor (even if you have already done so) providing all of this information. If you feel after that as though things are still not progressing for you, then please get in touch with me on lorna.gray@ggc.scot.nhs.uk and we can look at this in more detail with you.

Wishing you and your baby all the best,

Lorna

  • {{helpful}} {{helpful == 1 ? "person thinks" : "people think"}} this response is helpful

Update posted by Gillpops (a parent/guardian)

Thank you Lorna,

I have sent you an email with an update on how we have got on since my original post.

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