Elmira, New York Newborn Photographer | Featured Local Business | Untied Dental
We’re featuring a local business on the blog, Ithaca Dentistry. Dr. Elizabeth Billiot provides lip & tongue tie revision services and personally saved my breastfeeding journey along with so many others. Her story is below and may just resonate with you!
“My story: Why a General Dentist Revises Infants With Lip and Tongue Ties
I care, because I’ve been there. Four out of four of my children had lip and tongue ties, and I chose to have all of them revised.
I was determined to breastfeed before I was ever pregnant so when I found out we were having twins, I did as much research as I could about beginning a good breastfeeding relationship: skin to skin after birth, no pacifiers, no bottles for a few weeks and absolutely no formula. Then my girls were born 7 weeks early, and my plan went to crap. I could barely hold each of them before they were whisked away to the NICU, never mind skin to skin. Within a day they had been given bottles of formula because my milk hadn't come in and sleeping with pacifiers in their incubators.
I pumped almost exclusively for the month they were in the NICU and when they came home and got a little bigger and stronger, our breastfeeding journey really began... and it hurt! I had wanted to breastfeed more than anything, but it hurt so bad. The girls gained slowly but were gassy, colicky and cried a lot. They also had terrible reflux, and were put on baby Prilosec. I searched the Internet in desperation and thought their symptoms sounded like ties. So I asked my pediatrician to check if they had lip or tongue ties. He said no. I asked a lactation consultant to check. She said they were tied but not bad. On that news, I begged my pediatrician for a referral to an ENT. The ENT said yes they had lip ties but that doesn't affect breastfeeding. He didn't see any tongue ties.
The ENT used a pair of scissors to release one of my daughter's lips while I held her. It was traumatic for both of us. It bled like crazy, and she screamed so hard, her cry was silent for 20 seconds or so. I couldn't bear to do my other girl that way, and decided I would just tough it out. Besides, her tie didn't exist or wasn't that bad according to everyone. We left without being told anything about post op exercises.
I saw a decent change in the revised baby's latch and feeding habits. She started gaining weight much quicker than the other. I didn't make the connection, and brushed it off by saying they weren't identical and every baby is different. Then, around 8 months they started teething and my unrevised daughter began biting me. Due to the restriction, her lip couldn't become a barrier between her teeth and my breast.
I was about to quit breastfeeding both of them, when I went to train with Dr. Kotlow, who taught me to use a dental laser to make lip and tongue tie revisions. While I've been performing frenectomies (fancy word for tongue tie and lip tie release) with surgical scissors since dental school, my first infant laser revision was my daughter, and I was a hot mess the week before her surgery. But after the stretches were over...I was glad I did it. She started sleeping better and catching up in weight to her sister.
When my third child (another girl) was born, I’d been doing revisions for 2 years and treated close to 1500 babies. Yet still, it took me two weeks after identifying her lip and tongue ties, to actually do the procedure...I was so nervous again.
When I had my son, I thought I had seen it all, but by the time we left the hospital, pieces of flesh were missing from my nipple. In addition to ties, his high palate and recessed chin, made nursing excruciating. After being released from the hospital, my office was our first stop to do his revisions, but not much changed immediately. He was still chomping, not sucking, not having enough wet diapers and not draining my breasts. With the support of a great lactation consultant and chiropractor, we began two weeks of triple feeding, (nursing, pumping and then syringe finger feeding) and a vigorous routine of sucking exercises. Finally his more efficient latch allowed my breasts to heal but it was not the easy fix I had anticipated!
I can’t promise an easy fix, but I know what you are feeling. And I want to help your family.”
