FF 18: Tongue ties

Breast feeding is recommended by WHO for the first 12 months of a baby’s life, but it can be heart-breakingly hard work for some mum’s and babies. Tethering of the tissues in the mouth may affect baby’s ability to create a good seal and an effective suck when feeding, potentially causing tummy pain and reflux. Tongue, lip and buccal ties may also lead to trouble with chewing, swallowing and speech.
Kristie-Lee Anning is a local dentist with a masters degree in oral tissue revision. She shares with us the in’s and out’s of what this is all about and what can be done about it.

Dorte Bladt: I’ve got Kristie-Lee Anning with me today from Honeysuckle Dental and she’s going to talk to us about tongue-ties, and lip-ties and things like that. I’m so pleased you could be here. Thank you for joining us.
Kristie-Lee Anning: Thank you for having me.
Dorte Bladt: I’ve given people your name. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Kristie-Lee Anning: I’m a general dentist and I’ve done some additional training in laser dentistry, so I did a Master’s of Laser Dentistry over in Slovenia. That’s given me the opportunity to have a bit of better understanding about tongue-ties and things like that, and the release and benefit of the release. But I’ve also got a nursing background before I did dentistry. That’s also piqued my interest in that area.
Dorte Bladt: We just spoke before about you potentially being a little bit hyperactive. You have definitely been. You have confirmed my suspicions. You’re crazy. So why taking a course in Slovenia?
Kristie-Lee Anning: Yeah. The academy over in Slovenia, the Laser & Health Academy, they produce the lasers that I use in my clinic and they’re one of the best lasers in the world. So the training academy that they have there is really comprehensive so that’s why I’ve done the travel over to Slovenia to do the training on site.
Dorte Bladt: Okay. Excellent. So tell us a little bit about… I think for many parents, there’s a lot of confusion about what the tongue-tie or lip stuff, what is it that you actually look for and work with?
Kristie-Lee Anning: Often, I get a lot of mums coming in with babies that are having challenged with their feeding patterns, sleeping patterns. Babies have not been able to breastfeed effectively and have had to go onto bottle feeding. And parents that are wanting to improve the feeding experience often reporting that their children or their babies have got reflux or colic, very unsettled sleeping.
So when they come in to see me, we’re doing an evaluation to see if those feeding patterns, if there’s a contributing factor from tongue-tie release or tongue-tie that might require some release or some intervention. But also checking the other tissues within the mouth, checking lip ties as well and buccal ties and just seeing what the movement or range of movement is of all of those oral tissues.
Dorte Bladt: So what I hear you say is that you’re doing quite a comprehensive assessment both of the symptom, if you wish, but also what may be the cause.
Kristie-Lee Anning: Yes.
Dorte Bladt: It’s not enough just to come in and say, okay, I lift my child’s or my baby’s tongue up and I can see that it’s tied and I want it done.
Kristie-Lee Anning: Yes. There are quite a number of factors that we’re evaluating. Everyone has a freedom attachment or that piece of tissue that’s under the tongue or under the lip that tethers the tongue in some way. It’s whether or not that tissue is restrictive and functionally limiting in feeding, food consumption for older toddlers as well, not just babies, speech development and other factors. So there has to be some limiting factors there that contribute to it in order for us to want to treat that.