Inside the Booming Business of Cutting Babies’ Tongues
Inside the Booming Business of Cutting Babies’ Tongues
Dentists and lactation consultants around the country are pushing “tongue-tie releases” on new mothers struggling to breastfeed.
Dentists and lactation consultants around the country are pushing “tongue-tie releases” on new mothers struggling to breastfeed.
Tess Merrell had breastfed three babies and never expected trouble with her fourth. But after a month of struggling with her newborn, she hired Melanie Henstrom for help.
Ms. Henstrom, a lactation consultant, identified a culprit: The infant’s tongue was tethered to the bottom of her mouth. It was a common problem, she said, and could be fixed with a quick procedure at a dentist’s office.
“It was touted as this miracle cure,” said Ms. Merrell, a high school soccer coach in Boise, Idaho.
Ms. Henstrom recommended a dentist, who in December 2017 cut under the baby’s tongue with a laser. Within days, the infant, Eleanor, was refusing to eat and had become dangerously dehydrated, medical records show. She spent her first Christmas on a feeding tube.
So this is absolutely a medical condition (ankyloglossia) that can occur and does at times require surgical intervention, but just doing it for every baby that has issues breast feeding is a bit of a stretch.
Stretch? It sounds like straight up medical malpractice. Performing any unnecessary procedure under the guise of necessity should always be viewed as malpractice. Yes, that means upselling "doctors" are committing medical malpracrice, but good luck punishing them when capitalism only rewards them.
was touted as this miracle cure
To be fair, when you have a baby that's on their way to dying of malnutrition, and they turn around two days later and start thriving, it absolutely feels like a miracle.
I'm not at all shocked to learn the procedure is over proscribed, though. Save one desperate baby, and you probably start to feel really good about the whole process.
First the dick, now the tongue. Parents are fucking awful.
We had to get my son's tongue done. My wife's father literally can't stick his tongue out, and it looked like it skipped a generation because my son's tongue barely moved.
We are awful though. At least according to my kids when they refuse to eat dinner, even though they ate the same goddamn meal 10 days ago and loved it.
Women receive an immense amount of pressure to nurse their newborns to the point where they are made to feel like they are failing as a mother if they don't or can't. Lactation consultants are the worst at this, many refusing to admit that sometimes it just won't happen and the mother will need to look into alternatives.
Don't discount the business around lactation and nursing. Some are most definitely taking advantage of the societal pressure to the mom's for the money. Any good dentist will be honest with the mother when a procedure is truly needed or not, but it's not always easy to tell if you're listening to a good one or not
Parents definitely have a responsibility, but don't place all the blame on them in this situation.
Well said. To add to this, mother's are still going through a hurricane of hormones and exhaustion when both they and the baby are just starting to learn how to latch. I remember my wife crying saying she was a bad mother, and the baby hates her, and that she is so stupid to think she could do this. It was heartbreaking.
In both cases, these are procedures that doctors routinely recommend to parents, as the best thing for the child. Guess what else doctors routinely recommend? Vaccination against measles.
Parenting is fucking hard.
A shitty for-profit medical establishment makes it much harder. (Especially the jackass who starting the vaccine scare to push his own vaccines. A thousand death sentences wouldn't be enough justice for that guy.)
Blaming parents for getting it wrong doesn't help.
Well that's horrifying
It's not a big cut. It's a snip of a thin clear membrane that's holding back the tongue from functioning properly. Baby hardly reacts. I've seen it done. Easy peasy. Problem solved.
You're going to create a generation of Gene Simmons-es! You fools, you'll doom us all to years of lame radio-friendly rock!
I don't know why lasers need to be involved... it's a very quick and easy thing to do, definitely helped my second son. Over before my wife knew it had started. Almost no reaction from baby.
Same here. It's not a big cut. It's a snip of a thin clear membrane that's holding back the tongue from functioning properly. Baby hardly reacts. I've seen it done. Easy peasy. Problem solved.
Cheers
This was done to me. I have leftover skin flaps under my tongue that don't bother me at all. Never even think about them. I do think it gave me a slight under bite due to my tongue pushing against my lower teeth.