It’s a tiny strip of tissue, but it can have big ramifications. Babies whose tongues aren’t able to move freely can have trouble swallowing and be nearly unable to nurse. What is tongue-tie and how is it treated?
“I saw at a glance that something was very wrong at the Ginsbergs,” says Chava, a postpartum doula. “Usually, by the time a baby is a month old, he’s more or less on a schedule, mom is getting used to him, and people are waving goodbye to their postnatal doula — not calling one in. But the Ginsberg house was a wreck, baby Shimi wouldn’t stop screaming, and his mother Ayala looked completely exhausted.
“I watched Shimi nurse for a while. He was squirming and wouldn’t settle down. Then Ayala gave him a bottle of milk she’d pumped. The milk dripping from the corners of his mouth showed me that he wasn’t able to coordinate normal swallowing. A quick look was enough to see the heart-shaped tongue — one of the most obvious signs of a tongue-tie.”
Take a moment to pay attention to your tongue. Now swallow. Feel that wave-like motion? It touches the roof of your mouth at the front and then rolls backwards, while the sides flatten and then curve up again. The tongue should be anchored to the floor of the mouth by a thin strip of tissue called the frenulum. But in 5 to 10 percent of newborns, the frenulum is either too wide or too short, keeping the tongue from being able to move freely — a condition called tongue-tie. The normal swallowing you just experienced would be impossible with a tongue-tie.
The effects of tongue-tie on a nursing baby can be serious. “The tiny tongues of babies who are nursing have to be able to perform a complex type of sucking,” explains dentist Dr. Ari Greenspan (half of the Ari & Ari Mishpacha duo). “A tongue-tie can hinder baby’s efforts to move his tongue up, down, and out, which is what he needs to do in order to nurse.”
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