Breastfeeding promotion has a death toll and it’s likely to be substantial.
As breastfeeding promotion has become ever more aggressive, babies have been dying from dehydration, hypoglycemia, severe jaundice, failure to thrive and starvation.
As lactation professionals have embraced mandated skin-to-skin care and mandated rooming in of babies and mothers, babies have been dying from smothering in their mothers beds in the hospital and at home, and skull fractures as a result of falling out of those beds.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The problem of death from breastfeeding promotion has become so severe that the US government is taking action.[/pullquote]
Now we can add a new cause of potential death: massive hemorrhage from tongue tie clipping.
We might not have heard about this baby’s near death experience if his father hadn’t been an Australian celebrity:
Struggling to hold back tears, the children’s entertainer explained how the most traumatic days in his and wife Tori’s lives unfolded late last week after a tongue-tie snip went horribly wrong.
“My son Mack was in for a routine procedure and it didn’t go very well,” he said through tears in the emotional clip that aired on Dancing With The Stars last night, explaining to fans why he chose to withdraw from the competition.
“It led to blood loss, it snowballed from there. The blood loss got worse. He was rushed to hospital, it got critical and CPR was administered to the little fella.”
A Facebook post offers more information:
After a failed tongue tie snip on Thursday afternoon my son was rushed by ambulance to Gosford hospital where he lay in resus and had over 30 people working on him. CPR, blood transfusions, ventilator, emergency surgery, NETS transfer, ICU and a hell of a lot of drugs my Mack has proved the specialists wrong and is slowly mending. Gosford emergency department, you saved my son’s life – you were incredible. I love my family, I love my sons, I love my friends, and thank you so much for your thoughts – we are going to be ok. xxx @jimmyrees
The family posted a picture on Instagram:
What went wrong?
I speculate that the clipping was being performed by a lactation professional or midwife, not a physician.
Given the massive blood loss, it sounds like someone clipped a blood vessel on the underside of the tongue — or worse, mistook the blood vessels FOR a tongue-tie.
As this illustration shows, the blood vessels that supply the tongue run close to where the tongue meets the floor of the mouth, in exactly the area where tongue-ties are severed.
Isn’t it possible that a physician lacerated a blood vessel? It’s far less likely since they are much more knowledgeable about the anatomy of the tongue and because a physician is likely to have the clamps necessary to close off the blood vessel until it could be repaired and the ability to repair it.
It’s also possibly, though less likely, that the massive blood loss was the result of an underlying clotting defect such as hemorrhagic disease of the newborn, the result of refusing Vitamin K prophylaxis at birth. It’s less likely because that would have led to a continuous ooze and it would have taken more time to result in the infant’s cardio-respiratory collapse.
As long as I am speculating, I am going to speculate about something else: I suspect that the baby didn’t have a tongue-tie at all or at least not one that required correction. The blood vessels were probably mistaken for a tongue-tie because someone was looking for an explanation for pain or difficulty breastfeeding, not because there was evidence of a tongue-tie. There has been a massive increase in tongue-tie surgery in the past decades and most of it has been unnecessary.
As a recent article in The Atlantic noted:
In recent years, surging numbers of infants have gotten minor surgeries for “tongue tie,” to help with breastfeeding or prevent potential health issues. But research suggests many of those procedures could be unnecessary.
So add yet another way to kill a baby through aggressive breastfeeding promotion.
How many babies are dying each year?
We don’t know because we don’t keep track. That must change.
The Fed Is Best Foundation formally submitted an addition to the pending Healthy People 2030 goals:
Reduce the proportion of infants who require treatment and/or extended or repeat hospital admission for insufficient feeding-related hyperbilirubinemia, hypernatremia, dehydration, excessive weight loss, hypoglycemia and failure-to-thrive.
The Committee promulgating the recommendations has already reduced the aggressive pressure to breastfeed by removing 7 of the 8 goals that appear in Healthy People 2020. Hospitals will no longer be required to reduce the proportion of infants who receive formula and no longer be encouraged to seek Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative certification.
How did we get to the point where the government must try to rein in breastfeeding promotion efforts to protect babies?
We got here because the lactation profession’s bizarre insistence that — unlike ALL other bodily processes — breastfeeding is supposedly perfect.
The egregious harm to babies — including the fact that exclusive breastfeeding on discharge has become the leading cause of neonatal hospital readmission — is not because lactation professionals have grossly exaggerated the benefits of breastfeeding although they have done so.
The egregious harm to babies, including deaths, is because lactation professionals have refused to acknowledge the limitations and risks of breastfeeding:
They’ve refused to acknowledge that the incidence of insufficient breastmilk is HIGH, not low … and babies have died.
They’ve refused to acknowledge that formula supplementation is OFTEN needed, not rarely needed … and babies have died.
They’ve lied about the size of the newborn stomach in order to pretend that babies need less fluid than they do … and babies have died.
They’ve lied about the need for skin-to-skin contact … and babies have died.
They’ve lied about the need for babies to room in with mothers … and babies have died.
They’ve lied the incidence of tongue-tie and the need for tongue-tie clipping … and babies may die.
The problem has become so severe that the US government is taking action. Individual mothers need to be aware of the deadly risks of breastfeeding promotion, too, so they can protect their babies from lactation professionals.
