Weewdy - I'm in the same boat as you! DD is going for her appt with an otolaryngologist on feb 13th and shell be 7.5 months old!
Eevee had seizures when she was born because she had a bm in utero and wasn't breathing for 5 min when she came out. She was in NICU for two weeks, getting fed through an umbilical IV the first week and then bm in a bottle after it was taken out. After a few days of pumping every 2-3 hours the nurses said I wasn't making enough and they had to supplement with formula. They never told me I could try breastfeeding while she was there even though I had told them I wanted to EBF when she first arrived, so we didn't get to try until she came home. She would try at first but once her mouth touched my breast she would scream and pull away every time. I asked a LC about it and if it might be tongue tie, she said she didn't feel anything and I just needed to keep trying. She said the baby had nipple confusion and would just have to get over it.
By the time she was one month she still hadn't latched and I was only pumping 3oz of bm a day while she was eating 32+oz of formula. She would cry allllllll the time and we would just continue feeding her bottles all day long since it seemed to be the only thing that helped. I knew she wanted to comfort suck but she wouldn't take a pacifier and continued to scream whenever I offered the breast. The day she turned one month I went to a LLLI meeting and some of the women suggested I had a forceful let down since milk would leak from my breasts at just the idea of feeding her.
They told me to try breast shields and I did and thank God because she finally latched at one month! And two weeks later she latched without the shield! ... Then the pain came. For almost a month I bared it, sometimes biting my lip and screaming with my mouth shut it hurt so bad! By the last week I was sure we had thrush the pain was so bad and the baby was so fussy at the breast. We treated her for it after getting a prescription over the phone with no exam. This involved running my finger around her mouth many times, including under her tongue (looking back I wonder if I had helped stretch her mouth out). We went to the doctor less than a week later and she immediately said there was no thrush for sure but we could finish the week out if we were still worried. I still had pain so I did finish the week and the next week I went back to treating myself with lanolin.
It was a month before it stopped hurting. Now my nipples are never "soft", they perpetually stay in an erect state, one of them is misshapen a bit, looks like: [\ if that makes sense lol. Since then I worked tirelessly to up my supply, taking blessed thistle, fennel seed, nettle leaf, fenugreek, brewers yeast, goats rue, domperidone, and saw palmetto three times a day along with a period where I tried pumping (made things much worse as baby didn't have enough to fall asleep with), and eating oatmeal (no effect). We got her all the way down, very slowly, from 32+oz of ff a day at one month to 5.5oz at 5 months and her only getting formula at the breast through a Lactaid! Then she got dehydrated and had bright yellow diapers and hard poos...
At that point I thought my heart would break. I read "The Mothers Guide to Making More Milk" and saw I had all the symptoms of insufficient glandular tissue, but she also has a "fence" in the bottom of her mouth!!! I can't believe that LC when she was a few weeks old said she didn't feel anything - you can't run your finger under her tongue at all without removing it and going around the tissue. Not only that but the tissue on her top lip connects completely to her top gums! I had always noticed she doesn't stick her top lip out when nursing and if I ever tried to flip it she would unlatch and pull away but I just thought she was being stubborn.
Her GP knows we've been having so much trouble with bf and trying to get EBF so when I told her my concern she immediately referred us to the otolaryngologist. I'm still a bit peeved because DH made us miss our first appointment which was scheduled January 6th and now we've had to reschedule for feb 13th.
It sort of feels a bit pointless now, her being 7.5 months and having started solids. She gets 6-8oz formula a day now and it would be nice for her to be EBF but I dont know - will my breasts even up their supply this late in the game??? I'm also worried about cutting it affecting her speech development or her mouth hurting so much she doesn't want to nurse. On the one hand I wonder if I'm being selfish trying to get it snipped as a "last hope" but on the other I've read it can affect speech later in life so maybe it's better to get it done??
Anyhoo, that's our story
I'll come back and update after her appointment in Feb. Fingers crossed this makes things better and not worse!
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