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Preemies
Choking, now I'm afraid to feed her...
So, my LO, Mallory, is 2 weeks and 1 day old and in the intermediate nursery NICU.
Last night she scared the crap out of me! I was feeding her 8 pm feeding via bottle and about half way through she got choked, and it seemed like it lasted forever. She was turning blue, pretty much unresponsive and thankfully the nurses came over and we finally got her pink and coughing again and good to go, but talk about scaring the pants off of you!
I know this is somewhat common in preemies, she was just 35 W 1 D yesterday and is really just getting started with this whole eating thing, but wow, now I'm almost afraid to feed her. I know I have to get over it and I know as she get's bigger she will do this less and less often, and I hope never this bad again, but did you have experiences like this??
I had already planned on taking the infant cpr class this morning before yesterday's episode, but I took it this am and they went over choking as well, so I feel somewhat better, and I'm glad it happened in the hospital so the nurses could show me what to do, but again, now I'm nevous it's going to happen again.....
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Re: Choking, now I'm afraid to feed her...
Mine did exactly the same. She not only turned blue but had bradies and desats with the feeding. Dont be scared, it goes away as the baby gets stronger. I know its just gut wrenching watching the baby turn blue.
All I can say is be vigilant (their breathing changes slightly when they are about the choke and then you can control the nipple on the bottle to decrease milk going in).
My baby (now almost at 40 weeks, born at 30w 5 days) still chokes occasionally but I just pat her back like I am burping her and it passes
It is frightening. I would always decrease the flow of milk to the nipple when i thought Will was guzzling cause I was afraid he would choke. I would also watch the monitors like a hawk to make sure he was ok. He never choked that bad but he did scare me at times.
It does get better as they learn how to bottle feeds. Just keep at it. The more practice yoy both get together the better it will be.
I had the same issue with my LO in the NICU. The nurses switched to a very slow flow nipple and had me tip the nipple down when I felt like she got a mouthful to give her time to swallow.
It took her time to get the idea; according to the neonatologist, she was a little behind on the suck/swallow/breath part of things. Eventually, she worked up to learning this and was released.