Many articles have been published regarding tongue-tied babies and most labour wards and paediatricians will not perform the very simple procedure of 'snipping' the skin that connects their tongues to their mouths at birth. The procedure is rejected despite the fact that this would allow the babies to breastfeed.
Last year there were over 150,000 babies diagnosed with tongue-tie and less than 10,000 received treatment.
When my own daughter found her son tongue-tied and went to the doctor it still took some months to get a referral to the local hospital.
When it did come through, she was left speechless at his response.
"We do not do this here. Your son now would have to be given a general anaesthetic to do this. We would suggest that when you take him to see the dentist you mention this and he will be able to do this in the surgery."
I am not a 'medical expert', but if he requires a general anaesthetic to the 'little grey cells' there are very few dental surgeries that carry out work under a general anaesthetic. Or, would they numb the mouth and then snip the offensive piece of skin? If this is indeed the case then why could this not be done at hospital?As a matter of interest, private surgery for this very small procedure is more than £1,500.
If done at birth would take no more than five minutes.
It is imperative that the Government sort out these delays and ensure that especially breast feeding mums have the optimum treatment for their babies straight after birth.
Luciana Berger, UK Shadow Minister for Public Health, was quoted as stating:
"These worrying new figures show that thousands of mothers and babies are not getting the care and treatment they need fast enough.
Too many new mums who want to breastfeed their babies are not able to because of long waits for a simple tongue-tie procedure."
"For other parents, the length of the waits is forcing them to go private and pay for an expensive operation. Neither of these options is acceptable" she added.
