Episode 245: Taking Back Control of Your Health and Finding Root Causes with Jessica Hassel

Hi and welcome to episode 245 of the Untethered Podcast. Today we have Jessica Hassell joining us. Jess is a mom of eight, a speech language pathologist, a myofunctional therapist, and also specializes in homeopathy. She started out in early intervention and feeding, fell in love with all things oral motor and felt that there had to be more. She actually took my course the MYO Method and launched her own private clinic where she sees a mix of orofacial myofunctional disorders and clients for homeopathic consults. And Jess can be found at jessicahassel.podia.com and on Instagram under Instagram living.rooted. we will link all that in below this episode so you can have easy access to all the amazing things she offers. Quick Disclaimer all information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of a qualified healthcare provider. Welcome to the Untethered Podcast. I am your host, Hallie Balkan. I'm a certified myofunctional therapist, feeding specialist, podcaster, business owner and mentor. This podcast is all about getting your questions answered and collaborating with colleagues to bring you the most up to date information in the orofacial myofunctional therapy, airway, tetradural tissue and pediatric feeding therapy space. If you're new here, I challenge you to keep an open mind and join my mission to spread this message far and wide. If you've been around since June 2019, thanks for being a loyal listener as we jump into today's episode. Remember to listen with correct oral rest posture, tongue up, lips closed, teeth apart, breathe through your nose. Let's get started. Jess, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

I'm excited for you to be here. I know that you and I have known each other for some time now and you know it's always fun to have a colleague and friend like on the podcast. But also, I know you have a very important story and journey to share with everybody today, so we'll jump on into that. Do you want to start like with telling us a bit about how you even got into like the tongue tie feeding my space? Because I think that there's a big story there.

Absolutely. So as we'll get to eventually in the story, you have been very instrumental in my whole journey as a speech therapist and jumping into the tongue tie space. But it all started with my oldest who is now 14 and a terrible nursing journey that nobody could give me answers to. They just kept telling me, it's supposed to hurt when you nurse, and it's okay that she's six months old and it's still hurting when you nurse and that you're still having to sometimes supplement formula. But there's no. There was. There was no supply issue. There was no other issue that was contributing. And I kind of felt like I was a failure as a mom because I'm a speech therapist, I'm a feeding therapist. I had been in this space for years working with infants, and why couldn't I figure this out and why I was going to provider after provider and nobody could give me any answers. And come to find out, it's definitely a hereditary trait in our family. Multiple children have been diagnosed with tongue ties. But it took us a long time to get to the point where we figured out what the root cause was of their issues. And now here we are. Found your podcast. Then I found you on Instagram and started learning and digging, and it was like the light bulb went off. Oh, this is. This is. This is what it is. This is the root cause.

Yeah. And so now you've been on a journey with, I feel like all of your children at this point, right? Or most of them, right?

Yes. Correct. So the first time that somebody actually gave me a diagnosis right from birth was baby number four. I have eight children, by the way. That's probably going to blow everyone away. But baby number four was born Oconus, my husband's military. We were living in Japan, and there was a lactation consultant who had trained herself in ties because at that time, there wasn't a lot of education out there for anyone. And she said, your baby has a tongue tie. And I have convinced the ENT here in Japan to start doing releases for tongue tie babies. And it changed the trajectory. Trajectory of her nursing journey right away, like, it was so painful. She wasn't getting a lot of milk, and it was night, night and day difference once we had that release done.

That's amazing. That's incredible. And so then with. Have you gone back then with some of your older kiddos and, like, done other, like, myofunctional therapy, expansion and your releases?

Yes, the whole nine yards. Because my oldest three did not get releases. They have gone to airway dentists to grow their jaws to accommodate all their teeth because they were not coming in as they should. And so we've done that and done the myofunctional therapy. In fact, another very important player in our Journey was our airway dentist who introduced me to myoflexion functional therapy to begin with. And he said, okay, you're going to need to do mayo with your kids if we're going to do expansion, because otherwise, there's no point in what we're doing, because the tongue is going to keep that expansion in place on the palate, and the lips are going to hold the teeth in place. And I said, why have I never heard this before? Right?

I mean, well, first of all, I love that the myo conversation came from an airway dentist, because it's just like, more, please. More, please. More of that, because. Absolutely correct. Right. We. And you and I know now that we can expand all day long. We can grow the jaws forward, sideways, whatever direction you want. But if you are not teaching the tongue where to rest and bringing the lips together and accomplishing nasal breathing and whatever, you know, that treatment plan looks like for that individual, we know you're just gonna push those teeth right back out of alignment, and you're gonna big, long, expensive process to very quickly undo if you don't do myo alongside it.

And, you know, I didn't listen to his adv advice at first, and we did that with my oldest, where things fell out of place. And so we're back putting them back together. And. And she has had myo now, and she continues with just maintenance myo until she is out of her final appliance. But, yeah, it is so important, and I cannot stress that enough to parents now who think, can we just skip the myo? And, no, we can't, because we have got to get those muscles functioning well. Not just subpar, but well. So they're holding everything in place.

Yeah, well. And you're like, case in point. I have a case study for you right here, and I'd be happy to show you what happens and how much more money you will spend if you don't do mayo the first time.

And that is usually my talking point. I was like, I know how it seems as a parent that you're just spending the money, but in the end, you spend way less than I have spent, as I have learned through trial and error. Yeah.

So now fast forward to baby number eight, your sweet little baby who had a missed tongue tie. Right. You know, and that was a whole. I'll let you tell the story there. But you've now been through this with all of your children, essentially. This is baby number eight, where you're not new to this conversation. So tell us about, you know, what. What happened, what's going on? How is he doing now? All the things.

Yeah, so before he was born, you know, I was already prepared. I was preparing my providers, letting them know our history because I was like, I want to breastfeed. So I want this to be a seamless transition. I know that I had a body work at my birth so that she could go ahead and get her hands on him and loosen any tension from the womb. Because if it was strictly tension, we were going to address that right away. We were not going to leave that up in the air of is this a tie? Is this tension kind of mess? I know there's a lot of talk out there these days and I also wanted to have that story to be able to share with clients of hey, I've done it, I've done it both ways and this was our journey. So he got bodywork at birth and he got it for the next several days and weeks. Actually it ended up being months. He's now five months old. To address any tension, I started doing oral motor work with him right away. There wasn't, after that first body work session there was no pain, but there was still dysfunction that we talk about in the oral motor tongue tie world because he was not transferring as much milk over as he needed. But my supply was fine. Once again there was plenty of milk there and so he wasn't gaining weight in the initial days and weeks. He wasn't getting rid of that breastfeeding jaundice that he should have been getting rid of. I was having to supplement with pumped milk every single feeding and he was so miserable if I didn't, but he was just hungry because he was burning so many calories. So we went ahead and scheduled a consult with, with a dentist who did tongue tie releases on infants and, and to see her. And by the time we got to her he was, I mean he had had all the body work he needed, he had had all the oral motor therapy he needed, but he still appeared so weak. And so it was hard to tell for, I believe for that provider, like where he was in the process because I came after I had done all the pre work. So she, you know, I had to explain everything that we had done beforehand and that I really believed as working in this field with tongue ties that the only thing holding him back was that he had a true tie. And this was tension based. This was not that he needed more oral motor therapy. We had been doing that constantly, almost probably too much at that point where it was time for the release. So we gave he got a release lip and tongue tie is what he needed. He had two tissues in his buccals but they, we didn't think that they were actually contributing to breastfeeding journey at this point. So those were released and we thought okay, here we go. So we went home and we started doing more oral motor work, more body work. His body worker kept, kept commenting about how much tension he had in the throat area, that it seemed like it was coming from way back here and maybe even extending down into his epiglottis into all of this throat area. And she could not figure it out. So we added more workers in like bigger team. We added in an extra chiro, we added in a cranial sacral therapist. We had been seeing a cranial fascia therapist. So everyone now we have on the team just trying to help us and we just could not get to the RO of that extra tension. He's still have an open mouth posture. We're still having to supplement after every single feed or he's just miserable and he was so, so weak. He got to the point where at some point he got dehydrated. His little fontanel on the top of his head sunk in and I was like, okay, this is it, we're doing all the things. And so I ended up contacting another release provider for just a second opinion. I think the first one we saw was amazing but it's, it's never bad to have extra people on your team. And we went to see him and this was four weeks after his first release. He ended up getting a second release unfortunately. Um, and that, that provider warned me that he was so weak he felt like he was going to need intense oral motor therapy. He wanted me to go see an OT who was specialized in oral motor therapy in order to get him to where he was just sucking the normal suck, suck, swallow pattern because he didn't have strength to bad at this point. He had just been burning all those calories and not being able to build up any strength. But as soon as he performed that release he shocked both of us. He, he had eight back to back sucks. He went from three sucks pre release to eight sucks back to back immediately upon release. Shocked us both because we, we both agreed he was going to need so much therapy to build up his strength. And from there it's only been an uphill trajectory. We just started gaining weight and putting it on and now he's doing fantastic. He's five months old, he weighs 15 and a half pounds. And we stayed at oh gosh, six seven pounds for a long time. And he had been born. He was 10 pounds, 2 ounces. So he lost weight, and then he couldn't get it back on. So he's fantastic now. But it was getting to the root of where that restriction was coming from and why we weren't progressing and gaining weight, that he was just burning too many calories.

Yeah, well, and I love that you've highlighted that. I made myself a note here because I wanted to not forget to talk about burning too many calories. I know we've talked about it on the podcast before, but I think it's so important that parents understand, like, you know, not every baby, right. Has issues gaining weight, even if they're tethered oral tissues. But in these cases where babies are not gaining weight, sometimes they're losing weight. It's because, as you like, explain, they're expending more calories and trying to feed than they're actually taking in. And I think that can be scary to some degree, too, because you see this very tiny, skinny little baby they're not putting weight on. People are having all different kinds of conversations around you. You're kind of like, the world just feels like it's spinning around me, and all I want to do is get my baby to take a bottle or drink from my breast and put on some ounces in this feed. Like, can we just put on, like, it's, you know, ounce by ounce at this point. And, you know, like, my. My first lost weight in the hospital, too, and it was more than the 10% that they like, but it was never, like, as much as, you know, your baby as baby number eight did over here. And I think that even. Even so, you know, even in my experience, seeing, like, the failure to thrive put on her electronic file on my phone when I was, like, trying to nurse her and struggling at home, like, one day out of the hospital or two days out, I was like, oh, good, I've already failed as a mother. Got it.

Okay. Right.

You know, it's just. And even as a medical professional, like, we know what these things mean. We know you have to code things to get things covered by insurance, but at the same time, it's still that, like, you know, sucker punch to the gut where you're just like, absolutely, I have one primary goal right now, and I'm failing at that. And I just want my baby to be happy and healthy. And that starts with, like, being able to feed my child, right? Like, they need to feed, they need to breathe, and then we can work on sleeping and all the other things. Right. But yeah, it's, you know. Yeah. Now, was he. Would you say that his, his journey was like the most challenging out of all eight or they all been challenging in their own right?

Yes. I mean, I'm thinking about back over everyone and I have a set of twins who were both tongue tied and even their journey wasn't quite as harrowing as I feel like this one was because it was literally a day by day journey where we were, we were weighing not even for the ounce, we were weighing for the car, quarter of an ounce and just hoping something was going to pop through and something was going to give us, you know, that, that light at the end of the tunnel that we kept hoping for. And in the middle of all this, my husband deployed to Korea. So I'm here doing it by myself, thinking I have failed. Like, I'm in the space, I have done all this study and I can't even help my own baby. You know, that's kind of texting me.

And I like, we're like texting and I'm going, my gosh. Okay, hold on. I'm like, let me put on my thinking hat here because I'm like, you've literally done everything. Like, I was like, have you tried this? Okay, maybe. I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, I. Look, I don't want to tell you. I don't know, but I kind of don't know, like, what to tell you. And, and I think that's important for us to also talk to because even as like medical professionals in the space, sometimes, like, you know, it's like we hit a wall too, and we're kind of like, I don't know what else to do for this child. And I think the most important, important part too is like not giving up.

Right?

And I knew you were never going to give up. And I knew that you were talking to other colleagues too. And like, you know, I knew that you had a really good support team and everything else. Like, you're going to fig. I don't know like, what that looks like. I don't have that crystal ball or that magical answer for you. I was like, but my heart hurts for you guys because I've been there. Not to the extent that you were in this, you know, with baby number eight. I'm like, but I have been there and I know so many of us have been there. And the support is just so sad that it's 2023, almost 2024, and the support is still not Anywhere near where it needs to be.

Right. 100%. And then the, you know, the providers that are here, they're backed up as far as. Because there's not enough of them. Getting them isn't as fast as it should be, especially when your baby is a failure to thrive. That was something I kept running into as well, is like, here are these providers. We live in the Colorado Springs area, and we could drive all the way up to Denver, and many of them backed up for weeks because we just don't.

I don't have weeks. I don't have days. You're like, I need to see someone like, yesterday, like, yeah, yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

So will you. So you talked about some of his symptoms, share some of the, like, other symptoms that are kind of, like, burned into your mind that you just feel like, yeah, yeah.

So initially there was pain, but like I said, once we addressed it with bodywork, that took care of the pain because his. His jaw during birth had just been kind of crammed back into his. I mean, like, into his cranium. I'm not even sure how to refer to that, but the bodywork brought it forward some. I have a before and after. That's just incredible to see how just releasing tension can help a whole lot, especially as you're waiting and getting things prepared for a release. That was a big part of it. But he was leaking milk with. Whether he took a bottle, whether he breastfed, whether I was syringe feeding him. He just had such a trouble. Trouble keeping milk in his mouth and managing it front to back. He would choke a lot. I would have a really big letdown, and then he would just kind of choke. And I'm sure that was my body's response to him not sucking strong enough. I'm overproducing and letting down way too fast so that he can get the milk. And then he's just choking here, you know, coughing and pulling off and pulling at the breast.

A lot of that.

And then falling asleep while nursing. He never could make it a full session nursing. It was just a couple of. It felt like a couple of minutes in and he would be out. And then he'd wake up screaming, hungry, and we'd go at it again. And then he'd fall asleep in a few minutes, and then he'd wake up screaming. You know, it's just this endless cycle. And so I had this baby that I thought, he's colicky, he's unhappy. He screams at me all day long. The only time he got sleep was late at Night when he had expended so much energy all day long, crying and asking for more food, that he was so exhausted he slept. And that would make me feel like a failure because I knew what was happening. I was watching this and going, oh, he's not sleeping because he, he's, you know, he's satisfied and he's having these nice, warm, fuzzy newborn baby feelings. He's sleeping because he needs more food and he's exhausted all the calories he had for the day. So that, that was probably one of the hardest things to watch and feel like there was nothing I could do because I was doing the syringe feeding, I was trying the sns, I was trying the bottles, and I have so many different bottles at my disposal, and none of them were help. He, like, couldn't manage any of them.

Yeah, yeah. No. And I, I think one of the, you know, hardest thing is, aside from hearing your child cry, but also just knowing that you're in this field. You've done, like, we've said literally everything, you know, to do, and you've, like, you know, spoken to other colleagues and you've done everything that maybe they've even suggested to do, and it's still just not working. And I, I kind of, you know, always tried to find humor in, like, sad situations or stressful situations to, you know, make light of situations. And I would always, you know, with mine, I used to say the milk bar is always open because every 45 minutes. Here we go again. And like, I was in pain for 13 months. But, you know, she did, like, hug the first percentile that entire time. And it wasn't until, like, after maybe her first year that she did jump eventually to like, the fifth percentile, weight wise. But yeah, also just a little peanut expending way too much energy, always falling asleep. A couple of minutes into the feeds, I was getting horrible advice on what to do to wake her up.

Started on that advice.

Water on her, spray her down naked and blow on her. Like, I was like, yes, let me get my child naked and dump water on her head. Let's waterboard the baby while she's trying to drink. That makes.

And newborns have been surviving nursing since the dawn of time where mother's always having to pour water on them to keep them away. That doesn't seem like a motherly instinctual thing that we would do.

Right? Like, I'm pretty sure we would have thought of that if it was right. I mean, that would have, like, maybe come to our brains maybe.

I don't know.

Yeah, no, I mean, it was just. Some of the advice that I got was just like, yeah. Oh, okay. Thanks so much. Like, leave. Never doing that. Okay, bye. Right. And so it's just. You are left, I feel like. And this was 2015 with Lily, and I just felt like I was, like, also left to kind of just figure things out on my own, and it sucked. It really sucked. And, like, with my second, I felt like I had more information. Things looked very different. Feeding was easier in the beginning. We had other body things to work on. But, yeah, it's. It's just amazing how much they teach us. And also it's still amazing how much we know and how much we still, even as professionals, struggle to get our babies, you know, what they need and to get people to listen to us.

Right. 100%. And I think that's why it's so important that we have that team that we're building, one to, like, help us as professionals, so that we have people to refer our clients to when they need an extra step. But also, like, in our own journeys, that we've got that team that we can go to. And why it's so important to have all of these individuals, you know, the dentist and the body workers and this, the feeding therapist and whoever else we need to bring onto the team, they all play an important part. Nobody is, you know, this piece of the puzzle that we could just throw away. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Well. And so you also mentioned he had symptoms. Like, you just thought he was kind of colicky. And, you know, I always say colic is not a diagnosis. It's, like, one of my favorite things to say because I just feel like it's used like one. But nope, there's no ICD10 for that, so let's move on. So were there other things that you tried that, like, you know, because I know, like, with Lily, for example, I got some, like, the homeopathic remedies. Like, I tried gastrops, like, all the things. And. And I thought maybe it was working. And then I was like, I'm pretty sure that's in my head, because then it was definitely not working. And I was like, what am I going to give her this for if it's not working? But did you have any. You're in the homeopathic world, and we can talk more about that, too. So I'm curious to know what you.

Yeah, so I also have a homeopathic certification. So that was my other go to. I was like, all right, let's. What can we use? That has been Helping babies with failure to thrive or put on weight or if they're gassy, because that's another symptom. He was extremely gassy and in a lot of pain in his abdominal region. And so I did. I reached for the homeopathics, started with the ones for gas, and they would mask the symptoms, right? And not necessarily mask, but they might get rid of the gas, but they weren't getting to the root. Like, why do you keep having the gas build up over and over again? So we did that, and then I thought, okay, let's try one of these homeopathic for failure to gain weight. And we gained, like, 3 pounds, 3 ounces or not pounds, 3 ounces in a couple of days. And I was like, whoa, this is huge. This is amazing. But the problem was we still weren't getting to the root. So it kind of stalled after that, and we were back at square one. We're still not gaining weight. We're trying this, and it's not fully answering our question and why I am now so passionate about root cause approaches and not surface approaches. And, I mean, I think that's going to be what I preach the rest of my life. And then the other thing I kept having go through my head is you saying, colic is not a diagnosis. And I'm like, I know this is not who he is. I know he can be a happy baby. What do we need to do to get him there? Because it's. He's not doing this to make my life miserable. He's doing this because there is something wrong. And I think that's what I want other professionals and parents to understand is something is not right. Babies should not be screaming all the time. So how can we help them and get to the root of what is causing that?

Yeah, well, and from one SLP to another, right? I mean, this is a form of communication. And I think so many don't stop to actually recognize that Maybe, you know, more SLPs do. But. And I'm sure other people do, too. I don't want to discount, you know, humans in general, but, you know, but I think that when we really step back and we kind of, you know, there's people who talk about, like, what different cries mean and what different noises from babies may mean. And look, I'm gonna be honest. I never really could look at either of my kids and be like, oh, that means she pooped, or, oh, she's tired, or, oh, she's hungry. I'm like, no, she just needs something. She's communicating to me. That need something and, or something is wrong. And I think that if we can at least acknowledge that a baby who is vocalizing or crying or whatever that noise is and maybe coming the grunting, like, okay, maybe we know they're grunting, we think they're going to poop. Okay, great. But aside from that, you know, it's like let's acknowledge that this child is communicating to us and this is a baby's way of doing so. And by not listening and not realizing that they shouldn't be crying around the clock. And you know, if they cry and you pick them up and they stop, okay, maybe they wanted to be held. If they cry and you pick them up and change their diaper and they stop crying, maybe they were wet and uncomfortable or they had a diaper rush or I don't know, something that needed to be attended to, right? If that you pick them up and you feed them and they are satisfied and not crying, okay, great. They needed to be fed, right? They're basic needs that we know babies have that, that we can usually pretty quickly figure out by what I just described. But beyond that, right, if nurturing that baby and snuggling that baby and feeding and changing and swaddling and rocking and all the walking and driving and all these things are not working and you have a baby who is so they've got a distended belly and they're really gassy and they're so colicky. Per whoever is giving you that non diagnosis, that fake diagnosis, faux diagnosis, you know that that's what begs the question, right? Like well, why it's so frequent. And I think maybe that maybe that's a conversation we need to have is how frequent are they screaming at the top of their lungs, how intense is this crying and like for how long? Right? Because we talk about that with like oral habits. Let's apply the frequency, intensity and duration conversation to crying babies. Yes, babies cry. They're supposed to cry, but not like non stop, right?

And I think this kind of education should happen on the other side of birth. So before we actually give birth, we need providers educating in this field of, you know, this is the normal crying for an infant and this is what would be abnormal. And we should try to figure out and troubleshoot and see what's going on. Like let's start the conversation before instead of afterwards when mom has all these hormones going on and then she potentially could be pushed into postpartum depression or anxiety due to this and get them prepared. Well, going into, you know, having a.

Baby yeah, no, and I think, I think that's beautiful. I, you know, I. Makes me think of the classes that we took because our hospital was supposed, you know, so I had both my kids at the same hospital. It was supposed to be a very like mother baby friendly hospital, one of the top in the nation or whatever. Okay, cool. Baby could room in. They're not going to force baby into the nursery unless the parent says, please take baby to nursery. Like I was like, don't even take my child to test her hearing three times. And I was like, nope, you can still do it right here. And then finally they were like, just let her take the baby like to the lab to like test her so they can get a more accurate read on her hearing. I was like, will you bring her back in five minutes? You can't take her in a holding place. Like you're taking her and you're bringing, doing the thing and bringing her right back. Like I could not get up and walk at that point. So I was like, bring her right back. But you know, and there were certain things that I appreciated about like, like that system. I know they also had a gag order. They could not talk about tots. I knew that. Which I came to learn. I didn't know that with Lily. There are a whole other bunch of things that happened with like my first one's delivery too, that was just a mess. But with my second one just being more knowledgeable, I was like, oh, I can now kind of make the system work for me. And we didn't have to take any classes because it wasn't our first time having a baby. We had done like the infant CPR class and we did like a class class from home actually. And this was prior, this was like 2014. Okay, so this is like not, you know, pandemic times here, but we did a class from home and I don't know if they, they mailed something to us and we watched like a video and then we had to have like a conversation with somebody from like a charge nurse from the hospital or something. And then they answered our questions and. But the only in person thing was a visit to the hospital, like a little tour that we did and a CPR course. And like looking back on all that one, it was a lot of information and I would argue that 50 of it was not beneficial or helpful. And that's kind of why I wanted to do it at home instead of sitting in like two day long course in the hospital because I'm like, what a waste of time. And also like My husband was like, can we. He's like, I work. Like, I was like, I work, too. But, like, you know, obviously, we gotta do something here. We got a baby coming in. Like, we're not. Neither of us to pretend like we know what we're doing with this baby that's coming our way. Yeah. But I don't recall. And. And I'm sure I still have it, like, in her medical records, like, the big old book and pamphlet. I don't recall anything about, like, what we're talking about. Like, there was no information about. Yeah, there was information, I think, on babies cry to communicate kind of thing. And, you know, ultimately they need their diaper change or they need to be fed or they want to be held or whatever. But no, like, I want to call it troubleshooting. Right. I mean, you get a computer, you get a troubleshooting guide. Right? Like, we get a human. There's no troubleshooting.

No, I agree. I mean, I. I took classes similar to that. I. I showed up those evenings when I got off work to listen, and there was nothing like that troubleshooting. It was just like, your basics. You're going to feed your baby, your baby's going to be happy. Well, I feed my baby, and my baby's not happy because I fed my baby. Like, I contributed to the problem somehow in this dynamic and understanding, like, why that is and giving mom's answer and saying, it's not you. And there's an answer, like, there's a solution to this. Because I think we tend to blame ourselves as the mom. Right. Well, I took my classes, I listened to everything they said, and I still don't know what to do.

Yeah, yeah. No, I. There was something really beautiful you said in that with, like, there's a solution to this. And I think at least the way the American medical system, you know, works, oftentimes that band aid approach is taken. And look, I'm not gonna call anybody out or, you know, this is not intended to make anybody feel badly, but when you are working, working for a system that, whether it's a hospital system or a private practice or whatever, that basically can only keep their lights on if they bill insurance, so many billable units of whatever per day. Right. I get it. I understand It's a business. It's kind of gross, but it's a business. Right? So I get it. There are minimum hours and codes and whatever that need to be met. But we've moved because of that. We've moved so far away from, like, looking at the human in Front of us, looking at the. The family, the caregivers, that unit. Right. And I think instead of being like, hey, let's spend 30 minutes together and see what we can figure out so you don't have to come back 10 more times, it's more like, oh, yep, this is what's wrong with you. Let me slap a band aid on that. I know exactly what's going on. Let me give you medication or whatever, you know, and it's scary. It's scary.

You know what that made me think of is Josiah had the worst spit up, and so I was giving him homeopathics for that. But I know if I had asked the doctor for something, I would have gotten. What are they giving infants now? PPIs, right?

Yeah.

Because they say it's reflux. That's why he's crying all the time. That's probably why he's not gaining weight, because he's not keeping his milk down. But do we truly reflux milk?

Well, we. We reflux milk. Right? Not acid.

Right. Is he reflecting acid? He's. Is this milk that's coming up? And it's clear when I'm looking at this, what I'm looking at.

Yeah, I was listening to somebody, I don't know who was a gastroenterologist or similar, you know, specialists, who was talking about this around infant feeding on a training I did, it was probably like five years ago, but he was the first one who really opened my eyes to that. And he said, infants under a certain age are very rarely refluxing anything other than the milk they drink. So to give them an acid reflux medication is going to do nothing for them.

Right.

And now we know there's research that shows that these children who have been on acid reflux medications have all other kinds of issues, like broken bones at age 3. And, you know, there's. They're higher risk for that. And, you know, so I think that they are supposed to be using something else. I don't know what they're using in pediatrics now. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't do the same thing as the other one that they kind of said, hey, don't give that to kids under 12 months or whatever.

Whatever.

Or whatever the ages they put on it now. Because I still get a lot of parents who message me and they'll be like, my child's on acid reflux meds. I'm like, how old are they? They're like three months. I'm like, oh, no. Okay, okay. And look, is acid reflux Possible in a young infant, sure, anything's possible. But these are like pediatric gastroenterologists who work with this population who are saying it is so rare that it's actually acid. It is typically milk up until a certain age. And I don't remember if that was like, like five months, six months maybe until like foods are introduced or something. You know, they're. They're like, they're not typically refluxing acid. And I was like, huh, what an eye opener, right? Yeah, I was like, huh. All right. I mean, it makes sense. But also it's really nice to hear a doctor say that. Right. Because maybe somebody will believe it.

Yes, 100% and realizing, okay, they may be on this, maybe it's helping them. But what is the true solution? What is actually going to get to the root, you know?

Yeah, right. And so that, that whole, like, going back to. Because I started to comment on your whole, you know, root cause approach, and then I got sidetracked in true Holly fashion. But I think the beautiful thing is that we have the. We have some professionals and we have the data and the information and the experience. We need to take a root cause approach and to really figure out what's going on from the root up. And I would want families. I feel like the more families is get in front of this information, the more they're aware that the Z is an option because most are not even aware that they can what root cause medicine is or that they can even ask for something like this or is there another option? And people say, well, nope, here's the five options I gave you. And none of them include this. You know, that's where I feel like the more empowered we can help make providers, families, moms, you know, caregivers of these babies, the more they start to demand answers and the more I'm seeing the conversation shift, which is exciting. We still have like a really far way to go, but we. I know you and I see it like you just see these children go from surviving to thriving. Truly. Like, you see the entire path change. And honestly, sometimes, like you said, it's a team. It's an investment in time and money. I don't want to downplay it, but it's so much easier when they're little than trying to undo it and fix all the things when they're older. And again when they're older, it just takes longer.

Yeah. I mean, because I so much more for my older, who I missed all the signs and symptoms than then getting started now. And we're expanding those palates as younger and it just takes so much less time. They're not as frustrated with it and things. Yeah, so much easier, so much less money.

And you know, the questions that I feel like I've been getting lately are like, is my child too young for expansion? And I'm like, okay, disclaimer not I don't move bone for a living. I can't tell you yes or no. I can just tell you what I've done with my own children. I can tell you what I've seen with some of my patients and I can tell you what exists out there. And then you basically have to talk to provider about your own kids case. But I'm like, no, we're, we're seeing that if they got the two year molars, there are a lot, no one say a lot, but there's a number of options now where we can have different appliances that can expand that young. And I guess my question is why wouldn't we. If we can expand and it's only going to take a small number of months instead of a couple years and we can get some movement right in the jaws, grow them forward, grow them laterally, bring that palate down a little bit so there's actually room for the tongue as everything's kind of shape shifting to where it's supposed to be. And now we can even see on the X rays that those little teeth, teeth are able to like fill in the spots and that their permanent teeth are all going to come in where they're supposed to come in too. I'm like, why, why are we arguing this? Why is this an argument? Like we have physical data to support that this works and that this should be happening. But yeah, we still have a lot of people who are like, oh, come back when your child's seven.

I know, I know. But again, educating parents so that parents can shift the narrative because if they demand it, then it's going to happen.

Yeah, yeah. And really, truly, like I think my goal is to just have these providers pop up all over the map so that you're not having to drive an hour plus to go to an appointment and it's there where you, you know, and, and I, I was like, for me, right. I had that in Maryland. And then when I moved and Lily was done with her alpha, needed more expansion, I took her to a couple orthos who were, you know, one was, was airway centric and had even learned from another one who's like a long time really well known, respected name in the area. They're Both very well respected. And I'm not saying that they're not great at what they do, but, like, it was like, the assessment was airway centric, but the treatment was not. And I. Parents would not. Not normally be able to identify that.

Right.

Yeah. And I was, like, sitting there, and I was like, all my, like, little, like, you know, red flags. You're like, like, oh, okay, that was a great assessment. I'm super impressed.

But you're.

It's not matching your treatment plan. They wanted us to come back. They were like, like, come back in, like, six months and let's pull these teeth. And I'm like, your dentist that's connected to you, just not to pull those two teeth. And he. Because what he said, which I was like, that. He was like, oh, they'll fall out soon. And, you know, then she'll push the. The ones. The sharp teeth forward with her tongue. And I was like, I don't love that, but I also don't think you're wrong. I was like, I don't love that. That's the treatment plan. But also her tongue is down right now, so if that avoids us pulling teeth, all right, fine, we'll allow that. We'll expand and then work on mayo and get everything ready to be. But I was like, so interesting that they're literally connected offices. Two different providers, different practices, but you can walk from one right into the other. There's no doors. Okay. And they're completely connected. And I was like. But he. He just said, like, no pulling teeth. And I was like, we're not pulling teeth.

Yeah.

So he was like, okay, fine. Let's see what happens in six months. And I was like, see, again, most parents would not know if one said one thing and another just said another thing even the same day. Most parents would not necessarily either one feel comfortable advocating against pulling teeth.

Right.

You know, and all the above. So it just was. It kind of just really, I think, further opened up my brain as both a mom and provider, because I was like, holy cow. Like, I'm going through this, and I decided to grow a pair and speak up. But, like, there's people who know this who don't speak up, and there's also.

People who just don't know this.

And thankfully, I was able to drive an hour and a half to and from a dentist in North Miami in traffic whenever we had to. Which, you know, it's not just your scheduled appointments either, especially if you have two kids. Sometimes things pop out and you gotta just run over there and get it popped back in. And it's. It's, you know, it's like. I don't know how working families do this. Like, I work for myself and I work full time, arguably, but I also make my own schedule, so, like, I can make this work. You know, it was just. Yeah. Anyways.

Yeah, no, we've had similar experiences where we started with a provider, we had to move, so we found a new provider. New provider shrunk the pallet, so we moved again and had to find a new provider. And this. This time, thankfully, we moved back into a space that we already knew. I already knew the provider I needed to see, and he's been great. But, like. Like you said, we drive an hour and a half to go see him.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot. And you've got eight kids.

Yeah.

And a husband who's deployed, so, I mean. And one of them's not feeding well. And, I mean, you've got, like, a lot going on.

And it's. It's a. You know, three appointments back to back when we go every single time. And I'm so grateful that they're willing to see them back to back. There's a lot of offices that won't due to cancellations because there's. They say if we have three cancellations back to back, something happens. You know, we have to. So I'm just so grateful for this office because they're. They know our story, and they're willing to see them all on the same day.

Yeah, no, you. You've definitely got the experience and the story. So. So your little man now, how's he doing? You mentioned he's put on weight. He's happy. Is he not really colicky anymore?

Oh, my gosh. So night and day difference. When we got a full release, he went from, you know, leaking milk everywhere, not able to suck, to, like, drinking milk with fine, no issues. I mean, I'm still doing some oral motor to keep things moving as he hits each milestone, which I think is important. But he's up to 15 and a half pounds at five months, and he's getting, you know, the roly poly legs that we all love in infants because we think they're just so cute. And I'm no longer getting those comments of, oh, he's how old? You know, the ones that just break your heart as a mom when. When they realize that your skinny baby is older than they thought he was. So he's doing fantastic. He is the happiest baby that he will ever meet. The only time he cries is if he needs a diaper changed or he's hungry, imagine that. Right. Or he wants to be held. It literally changed his trajectory. He loves tummy time, which I just have to put a plug in for tummy time because I feel like when there is ties and oral tension, they don't like to be on their stomachs. And now that we have addressed that, tummy time for him is fun. He loves it. Yeah, he'll stay there, you know, until he gets tired.

You mentioned, like, hit that when you were getting the body work done with him early on, that there was. Even after the first release, there was. There was so much tension throughout his neck especially. It sounded like up towards the hyoid bone. And, you know, and that's kind of like been one of my theories since the very beginning when I started to look at all like the little, you know, connective tissues and muscles and the bone and all the relationships. And I was like, so. And someone kind of opened my eyes to this. It wasn't me, just, you know, I'm not the originator of this information, but I was just like, oh, so what you're saying is if like there's tethered tissue under the tongue that pulls up the floor of the mouth, it pulls up other connective tissues that then pulls up the highway forward, you know, upward and forward, and that impacts the. Okay, so now we've got an impacted airway. We've got an impact. I mean, your trachea, your esophagus. Hello. Like, of course we're going to be colicky and uncomfortable. We're swallowing air, which I don't think we even mentioned. But like, so many of these babies, right, they end up swallowing excessive air, one, because of how everything's positioned. But two, because like you said, he was just leaking out of the side of his mouth. We know with these little ones, if they're leaking out of the side of their mouth, right. Obviously they're not sealed and they're probably also pulling in and swallowing air, which also can distend the belly, cause a lot of gas, make for a very colicky baby, and, you know, air aphasia and all that. And, you know, again, I just feel like, why is this not similar? Like, why is this not obvious to people at this point in time?

Right. What other education do we need to make sure that we make this obvious and make this the standard part of education in the pediatrician's office. Office. So that you go in for your three month appointment, you go in for your six month appointment and they have this little checklist of tots that they can just check off and say, oh, you should go see your. Your provider here in the area. I mean, I would love to advocate for that because that would do parents so, so much, just such a service to them.

Yeah, well, and I think the screening even starting in the hospital, like, I know we've had conversations around how it's happened in Brazil and how, you know, those, like, they have universal newborn hearing screenings. Well, can we have universal newborn, you know, feeding screenings? And as part of that feeding screen, can we assess for tetheral tissues? And if it's not going to be the lactation consultant, because that hospital sizers gag orders around that, fine, bring in a dog. I don't know, let the outside pediatrician assess for it. Or let have some dedicated person in the hospital that assesses all babies. Maybe it's a charge nurse. I don't know, maybe they're an rn, ibclc. I don't know. But somebody needs to be doing this with the understanding that we're not just assessing for shots, assessing feeding, because, you know, a lot of these lactation consultants are already assessing for feeding. So it's really doing more of a comprehensive assessment and looking at a number of other factors that I think are just been left out of their assessments. Not by their fault necessarily, whether they're educated or not, but probably a lot of politics in an administrative red tape, right?

Yeah. Unfortunately, if we could just kick the politics and red tape out of it, I think we'd be in a better.

Place for all things in life. Oh, my gosh. Well, this has been amazing. Is there anything that we haven't covered? I feel like we've talked about so much.

We have covered it all. I just want to encourage parents that are listening specifically to be an advocate for your own child. If you feel like there isn't something, something isn't right, you're most likely correct. And continue to advocate for your child until you get the answer you're looking for. That's kind of my story on baby number eight is that I just continued advocating until we had figured out the root cause of what was going on.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Be. You know, I think once upon a time we said something like somebody, I guess said, like, be a, like fiercely unapologetic, like, advocate or like whatever they said for your child. And, and truly, like you said, like, follow that mama gut. Follow your gut instinct. Because if you feel something is wrong and nobody else is seeing it, like, it's okay to trust yourself and then shut out all the other noise because they're not having the experience that you're having with that.

Absolutely, absolutely. Don't any. Don't let anyone shut you down. Right. Keep going for it.

Well, thanks Jess. This has been amazing.

I've enjoyed it.

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