Emily’s Journey Part 2
In part one we covered the first few weeks of Emily’s life and whilst I’d love to say that was the end of her challenges - that was sadly not the case!
After seeing the IBCLC and the paediatric chiropractor for a few visits we chose to have Emily’s tongue and lip ties cut at the age of 11 weeks. Most parents report an instant change in their baby’s behaviour and find them more settled once oral ties have been released. Unfortunately this was not the case with Emily. We did all the stretches and exercises to retrain her tongue and mouth muscles however, she still struggled with feeding and reflux problems. Over the next few visits with the chiropractor it was suggested that maybe removing dairy and soy from my diet and thus Emily’s diet as well would give her stomach a chance to recover. Within 4 days of removing dairy and soy we started to see some signs of improvement in little Em!
We continued with her chiropractor sessions and then at around 5mths old we saw the IBCLC for a follow up consult. At that appointment it was discovered that Emily’s tongue tie had now healed into the shape of a capital I. Of course in typical Emily fashion that shape of oral tie is incredibly tight and very rare especially in a tie that had already been cut once. Seeing as we’d already had the tie cut once with a scalpel we decided that we should consult with a dentist trained in releasing oral ties with a laser for a second release.
The dentist took one look at Emily’s mouth and agreed that a laser release was going to be the only way forward for her now. The dentist then proceeded with laser releases on Emily’s tongue, lip and cheek ties. She said it took her 1 - 2 minutes more to perform all the releases than she would’ve liked. Once Emily calmed down from the initial shock of the procedure and we took her home she had the best night’s sleep of her life!
Over the next month we continued with Emily’s mouth stretches and were able to wean her off her reflux medications with great success! She became happier, more chilled out, slept better and began to show interest in the world around her more.
We fast forward now to around the age of 9 months old where Emily encountered her next medical problem - recurrent ear infections in both ears (bilateral). We kept her out of swimming lessons, put ear plugs in her ears for baths & showers however, nothing we did made any difference to the amount of ear infections she would have. Her diet remained free of dairy and soy throughout this so we knew that wasn’t a contributing factor to any excess mucus production which could affect her ears. As we moved into the year 2020 the ear infections continued and we all know the chaos caused around the world by the arrival of the COVID-19 virus especially in the healthcare setting. I pushed her GP to write referrals to both the public hospital and a private ENT (ear, nose and throat doctor) to seek their opinion on managing the ongoing ear infections. The public hospital answered with a letter stating that Emily was unlikely to be seen for an outpatient appointment for more than 12 months - I was absolutely shocked! At this point we decided to pay privately for her to be seen by an ENT and it was the best decision we could’ve made!
Part 3 to follow
