You’ve been told you need to see an osteopathy or other “bodyworker” before your baby or child has tongue-tie surgery. Maybe you’re not sure what the purpose is, or how many appointments you’ll need to be optimally prepared for the release.
The whole process can be overwhelming – the diagnosis, the decision about whether or not surgery is in your plans, starting the home exercises and researching the providers. It can be a very confusing time. Your primary point of contact is usually your IBCLC and we partner with them to help guide you through this process.
So, how many treatments will your baby need to be ready? What do we look for to work out if your baby is ready? To get an idea of this, consider my shoe-laces analogy. If you’ve read the blog post about how tongue tie affects the whole body, you’ll know it. You can read that here, if you haven’t.
If those shoes laces are suddenly untied, do you think you could walk normally straight away? Wouldn’t it take some time to adapt and learn how to use muscles that you’ve never been able to use well before? We can say the same about your baby – once the ties are released, they have a whole lot of movement available to them, but they will need to work to be able to control and strengthen the tongue.
We want the recovery to be as rapid and complete as possible. If we can work to minimise any surrounding tension and get the best possible function pre-release, there is less for the baby to adapt to after, and the recovery will hopefully be less bumpy. We also assess and consider the level of nervous system regulation. This is even more important as the baby grows older.
We are always balancing the readiness of the baby, with the level of function they are achieving. Sometimes, tie releases need to occur sooner to preserve breastfeeding function. In this, we are guided by the IBCLC or midwife who made the diagnosis. But even if there’s no major urgency, we still don’t want to take too long in preparation and miss the crucial optimal time either.
So, a general rule of thumb is to book in early, so that we have time for 2-3 appointments before the surgery date. That way, we can discuss your child’s unique situation after assessment, and allow some time to prepare. Sometimes, we don’t need that many, sometimes, we need one or two more. Every baby is unique.
Our osteopaths Bronwyn, Melinda and Jati have special interests in treating babies, and spend the majority of their day caring for them. They regularly undertake further learning in this area.
Call us to discuss your situation with our reception staff – they will be happy to explain further and book in some times around your release date.