Testimonials

So I’m a first-time mother and this is Sedone and when she was born she would not latch on to me and I thought there was something wrong with me. I fought and fought with her trying to get her to latch because I wanted to be a breastfeeding mama to my little girl and unfortunately it wasn’t working. So she would get really really fussy so when you know babies are born they lose a little bit and she was born at six pounds but then went down to five-eight when she left SMH upon discharge but then shortly after she went down to five-six and that was when we definitely knew something needed to be done. So we did see Dr. Santos like I said the the procedure took place after we had seen her that same very day and within two weeks she’s gained a full pound and I heard a little bit about having tongue-tied and the lip being tight and I was told that that’s most likely the problem so a lactation consultant came over to my house and suggested that she be looked at and showed me the issues that were in Sedone’s mouth which were both of the the lip and the tongue. I was a little skeptical about going and seeing somebody but after I saw in her mouth that this needed to be taken care of I was given several referrals and I decided on Dr. Santos. I came to her office with my husband and we were thoroughly given all the information necessary to make us feel like this was the best procedure and the best thing to do for little Sedone. Mind you too she was also I think less than a week old. So it was a big decision to decide to do something like this. We chose Dr. Santos not only for her from reviews that we saw online but also from meeting with her one -on -one coupled with the fact too that we were told that we could do laser or they could have it cut and we heard that lasering is less invasive and it’s more hygienic and it’s less stress on the baby and so that’s also why we chose to get this done. Nonetheless, we wanted it done immediately and Dr. Santos took the time out of her day without an appointment just for us to come right over and she actually completed the same procedure after meeting with us and it was a hundred percent turnaround literally after we left her office. She was taking to the breastfeeding a lot more and then with time she would latch on. We had to do exercises but I think the exercises helped in her recovery process and my husband and I both initially did them together but she is a hundred percent turnaround, absolutely. She latches on. I don’t have any problem. In fact, I have to sometimes limit her to how long she can breastfeed because she just wants to do it all the time. But I highly recommend the procedure and if we have any other children this will be the first thing that I would look for if I had problems with breastfeeding with a future child and I would highly recommend Dr. Santos and her office is wonderful, and Sedone will be coming here in the future.

My journey to Dr. Santos. It actually began about two months ago. I gave birth to Havela. She was six pounds seven ounces and latched on right away. She was healthy. Everything was great. Being a first -time breast feeder, she nursed very easily.  I had a lactation consultant come in and said the latch was good. But two days later, as I left the hospital and went home, that night I sat in my room and I cried knowing that I had to nurse again. And It was so painful. My friends had told me that it would be painful, but I didn’t realize that it would be as painful as it was. That night, a neighbor is a lactation consultant. I called her and she came over and helped me, gave me a nipple shield, and said that my daughter’s tongue, the way that her tongue moved, that I needed to use a nipple shield. That’s why I had the pain. After that, she was on the shield, but I knew something else was wrong. I knew that something had to be wrong with the whole process. So I went to her two -week -old doctor appointment and Havela still was not at birth weight after two weeks.  She wasn’t getting enough through the breastfeeding. I saw my chiropractor. As she examined Havela, she saw that Havela had a lip tie and a tongue tie. I had never heard of such a thing. I didn’t understand it. So I did some research. She had given me a name of a dentist to call that would do a laser surgery. It would be simple laser surgery. When I called the dentist, I didn’t feel comfortable with the whole process. I started searching and I thought, you know, know, what is this lip tie, tongue tie thing? Is it just a fad? Or what is, is it real? And so I just wasn’t at peace with doing the surgery, but I knew something was wrong. And so I had done a Google search of dentists in Sarasota that did this type of surgery. And that’s when I found Dr. Santos and she had a video of a testimonial of another woman,and the testimonial was very similar to mine. And so I called Dr. Santos and they got me in that week, which I was blown away by. She got me in and showed me, physically showed me the lip tie and the tongue tie and explained why this was causing pain, and why Havela was having like I ended up having to feed her with a bottle to get her up to birth weight, and she would leak milk out of the side of her mouth. She would burp and spit up. She had such bad gas. I mean, the pain that she would be in after feeding was awful. So I knew that something was wrong. And so when Dr. Santos showed me the tongue tie and the lip tie, and actually the lip tie, it wasn’t a normal lip tie where you would have a tie at the tip of your tongue. This was underneath and she had to actually show me where it was, and that was very assuring that I was doing the right thing. We scheduled the surgery for the next week and I brought Havela, and just before she was about to feed, they took her in and they did the laser surgery, they did the top and the bottom, and then I fed her immediately after with the bottle, because at this point I was not able to breastfeed any more. She won’t even go on the shield. So I can’t even breast feed, she’s gassy, and spitting up, and its not a good situation.  So immediately after the surgery I fed her with the bottle and she stopped crying and she was okay.  And that night she was kind of calm for a few hours after, and that night you have to do different exercises and make sure the ties don’t reattach. It was a pretty big commitment, 4 weeks of doing extra tongue exercises to get her tongue to move again, to come out of the mouth, to move side to side. And you also have to rub underneath the tongue, rub her lip so that it does not scar and reattach.  It was hard. The first time I did it I wanted to cry because she was crying. But by the next night she was fine. The lactation consultation came over on Thursday, and was able to have her latch, and it didn’t hurt. After that it became more and more, breast feeding got easier, the times that I did feed her with the bottle when I had help overnight because she still feeds every 2 – 3 hours, the bottle, she did not leak out of the side of her mouth. It was literally night and day.  The commitment is huge, there is discomfort, but when you get through it, it will change your life, it will change the baby’s life.  And so, Dr Santos is highly recommended.