My son was diagnosed with a tongue tie when he was over 3 years old. We went through many struggles in the first years of his life that now make since on how interconnected they were. I recently watched a video and marveled at how my then 9 month old son couldn’t move his tongue and how all the doctors we took him to didn’t see it. There were many other signs that, looking back, I now see it makes sense that he was tongue tied.
Related: How To Improve Toddler Communication
Nursing Problems
My son was always too tired to nurse at night time. During the day he seemed to not struggle with this, but at night he couldn’t open his mouth enough to nurse. This baffled and confused anyone I shared this with. Now I see that he was spending so much energy nursing that he was just exhausted.
Related: Everything You Need To Know About Exclusive Pumping
Slow To Gain Weight At First
When my son was less than a week old, we ended up being bullied into giving my son formula because the pediatrician we were seeing was overly cautious and my son wasn’t gaining weight as quickly as she would have liked.
Recurring Thrush
During my incredibly brief breastfeeding journey with my son, we endured thrush at least 2 times. I only nursed him for 2 months before I switched to exclusive pumping.
Mastitis
Because my son was unable to empty my breasts, I ended up with mastitis early on. This isn’t an uncommon thing to happen, but combined with the other problems I was having it is a sign.
Struggling To Drink From A Cup
As a 2 year old, my son should have been better at drinking from a cup than he was. Now as a 3 year old, he still struggles with drinking from cups. It’s a skill we definitely need to start working on.
Delayed Speech
At 2 years old my son was hardly saying 20 words consistently. This is the biggest reason we finally got started with speech. At 18 months I was concerned about his speech, but my husband said I should wait. Now, having a 21 month old daughter who can say complete sentences, I recognize how delayed my son was.
Mouth Breathing
Whenever my son slept he would have his mouth open and be breathing through it. I didn’t think anything of this until during his tongue tie evaluation I was finally asked this question. Looking back at pictures of my son sleeping he always had his mouth open. This is also why he couldn’t keep a pacifier in his mouth as a young baby.
Reasons Doctors Didn’t Realize It Was A Tongue Tie
No Pain
I wasn’t experiencing pain when I was nursing. This is usually a huge sign that there is a problem with the latch, but for some reason I didn’t have any pain.
Other Speech Problems
My son has more speech complications than just a tongue tie and this has made it difficult for his speech therapists to help him.
Covid
My son was 6 months old when Covid-19 hit. This made it so that many of his speech appointments later on were done through zoom. Many doctors also wrote off his speech delay as being because of masks, he couldn’t see mouths moving enough to imitate the action.
He has now had the surgery required to clip his significant tongue tie and his speech is already improving. If you think your child may be tongue tied, make sure you pursue it and get them the help they need.
