It takes a village...

Success Story / Long Post: With my son, we had a tongue tie diagnosed too late and it was only partially revised, so I was never ever able to fully breastfeed him and I instead pumped 8 times a day for a year, while constantly battling low supply. This time with my daughter, I felt more prepared on the tongue tie front and my plan was to get it corrected early on with a laser and then our breastfeeding journey would be much easier than with my son, and hopefully successful. Unfortunately she was born with a very severe tongue tie. Scissors were used when she was born to clip what they could, when she was 4 days old we had someone in town try to correct it with a laser, but it was so thick and vascular, it was only partially revised, though her lip tie was able to be fully corrected. 24 hours after the laser revision, my daughter became lethargic and stopped eating, so we ended up at the ER due to dehydration. No one was able to get an IV in her, so we were admitted into the hospital where we ended up staying for 5 days (probably would have been shorter if Memorial Day wasn't thrown in the mix). At this point my daughter completely stopped nursing and I had to resort to pumping full time and trying to finger feed my daughter with a syringe. It was a very stressful 5 days just trying to get her rehydrated and hoping that she might start breastfeeding again. But thanks to the amazing lactation support at UNMH, even though everyone else was telling me how insignificant that tongue ties were and their effects on breastfeeding, lactation was my advocate and they forced the issue on getting speech and ENT involved. Finally, ENT looked at her tongue and agreed to try and correct it under general anesthesia. So we went home thinking her tongue tie was fully revised. We did the recommended stretches and kept on trying to get her back on the breast. After 2 weeks, she finally started nursing again. Over the next month we slowly worked her up to breastfeeding full time and started to wean out the bottles little by little. After the ENT procedure had fully healed, we still noticed a very significant tongue tie, so we decided to go to see Dr. Bobby Ghaheri in Portland to get her tongue tie fully corrected once and for all. So last week, her tongue was completely corrected and we are now fully breastfeeding and she just took a full weighted feeding within 20 minutes this morning and she is now 12 weeks old!!! It has been a long road and I honestly thought we might never get here, but I am finally breastfeeding one of my babies!!! So for those struggling, it is possible with the right team around you and lots of support. It truly takes a village and I am so thankful for everyone that has helped me get to this point :-)

~Carrie Jung