5 months ago we welcomed our second baby Henry into the world, we had the newborn check with no concerns and we were discharged home a few hours later.

It was then 5 days later that a midwife finally came out to see us at home. I expressed my concerns to the midwife with Henry’s feeding, he was very slow couldn’t get a good latch, would always have milk leaking out of his mouth just couldn’t cope with the breast at all and was always hungry.  She didn’t offer much help and just implied that newborns feed often. I reached out to our local breastfeeding counselling service to which I was offered a phone call, I explained my concerns again and my view that Henry may have reflux to which I was told to try paced feeding or get gaviscon from the GP. No home visit or help with assessing his latch was offered. As I didn’t have any support we just had to work it out for ourselves so we decided to try expressing, so Henry had expressed milk from a bottle which worked fairly well as we were able to use a really slow flow teat which helped Henry massively but I struggled to keep up with the demand of expressing so we soon ended up switching to formula. 

Many GP telephone appointments discussing Henry’s issues, not once was I offered a face to face appointment to assess Henry and try to determine his issues. We were just told to carry on with gaviscon and infacol as Henry had terrible colic as well. We had our 8 week check up with the GP which was face to face where tongue tie was not checked for even with all the symptoms and difficulties Henry had.  

I discovered Henry had a tongue tie at 23 weeks of age when he was chewing on my finger, so I contacted my health visitor, they weren’t interested and just said I needed a face to face appointment with the GP. I phoned the GP AT 9.50am and finally got a call back at 5pm the same day to which they offered me a face to face appointment 5 days later, I explained that this simply was not good enough and I had to insist that we were seen that day so they reluctantly saw us at 5.30pm. The GP was great and assessed Henry and we had a chat about all his symptoms and struggles we have had. She didn’t feel that Henry would be accepted if she referred him for the tongue tie procedure so agreed to email ENT and ask if they would be willing to see Henry. So I left feeling very confused but I decided that a second opinion might be a good option, so I made an appointment for a few days time with a private clinic to see a tongue tie practitioner and he assessed Henry and confirmed that in fact Henry had a severe 85% tongue tie and cut it there and then. I’m so thrilled that it’s sorted and my boy no longer has to suffer but I have such anger towards the various professionals within the NHS who neglected to check for it. I will never get that time back, never be able to successfully breastfeed him and let’s not forget the cost, both me and my husband are hard working, pay our taxes so when one of our children need something from the NHS they should be able to access it! 

I am sure all the lack of support and only being offered virtual appointments will be blamed on COVID but that’s not really a good enough excuse. Henry was born in May so it was not in the early stages of the pandemic and we were not in lockdown. 

I am trying to raise awareness of how common tongue tie is in babies and I feel the NHS should be routinely checking for it at birth and again at the 6-8 week postnatal check up. My boy suffered in silence for 5 whole months, there’s nothing we can do to change that but I can try and help other babies and families to not go through the same thing we went through.