Preemies

feeding therapy..

Have any of you experienced this? If so, who reccommended this to you and or how did you know your child needed it? My pedi has never reccommended it but when I was speaking to a psychologist and telling her of my LO's feeding issues she said she would maybe have her evaluated. I figured 9 months was too late...she eats solids completely fine; just has issues with bottle feeding (since about 3 months)

Any advice/excperience is appreciated.

TIA-Jaime

Lilypie Premature Baby tickers image Image and video hosting by TinyPic

Re: feeding therapy..

  • well, I knew my child needed it when he stopped eating entirely. That part was easy. *LOL*

    But honestly, we didn't do much for a while. His OT did some jaw strengthening stuff, but not a lot. He just really started FT a couple of months ago. Yes, there are things they can try to help with liquids. You might just go ahead and get her evaluated and see what they/you think.

  • I'm not sure I know exactly what you mean by feeding therapy. When EI came to do Cooper's evaluation, the OT recommended he be seen once a week to work on his feeding issues. He fights horribly, but continues to gain weight.
    Lilypie - Personal pictureLilypie Premature Baby tickers Photobucket
  • Loading the player...
  • I guess I wonder more about what type of issues you're having. Eating solids fine, but trouble with liquids makes me think that maybe there could be something up mechanically. The person who evaluated Evan's swallow when he first started having trouble was a speech language pathologist.
  • We just had our evaluation last week because DS is to the point where he will only eat in his sleep. We see a speech therapist and she's having us focus on strengthening his mouth an tongue muscles by feeding more solids and milk with a straw cup. She said that the bottle issues should improve as his mouth coordination improves. So for your LO this wouldn't really apply since he eats solids just fine. I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to get him evaluated though.
  • Thank you for all your responses. The basic issue is her fighting the bottle. She will take about an ounce or two and then will push the bottle away with her tongue and not want to be bothered. We have worked out a system to get her unfocused on the bottle and focused on something else such as us or a toy (not sure if this is a bad thing lol) but it gets her to eat a little more. So I'm not really sure if it's a tongue thing or feeding issue...because like I said she eats solids without a problem.
    Lilypie Premature Baby tickers image Image and video hosting by TinyPic
  • imageVine07:
    Thank you for all your responses. The basic issue is her fighting the bottle. She will take about an ounce or two and then will push the bottle away with her tongue and not want to be bothered. We have worked out a system to get her unfocused on the bottle and focused on something else such as us or a toy (not sure if this is a bad thing lol) but it gets her to eat a little more. So I'm not really sure if it's a tongue thing or feeding issue...because like I said she eats solids without a problem.

    I think distraction is fine if that's what you need to do.  Like I said above, DS will only eat while sleeping (things slowly progressed to that).  And at our therapy evaluation the therapist said that since we have a system down to get him to eat to keep doing it.

  • This may be a silly question, but have you tried usin a sippy cup instead? I have a friend who's DD refused bottles and went straight to the cup.
This discussion has been closed.
Choose Another Board
Search Boards
"
"