Swallowing Status

Yesterday Grant had a swallow test done at UMC. The speech pathologist (a former 9:30er) determined that he has a few issues. The liquid would bounce from his airway to his esophahus but was not aspirated (thankfully). This 'bouncing' is definitely not normal. The liquid should just go straight down his throat but doesn't because his swallowing is delayed. She also determined that he is a little uncoordinated when drinking. This behavior is more typical of a baby in the NICU, but not of a healthy, full-term infant. Lastly, she suspected that he does have reflux and recommended getting him tested. Her first plan was to have ECI (early childhood intervention) come to our house to do feeding therapy in order to catch him up to age appropriate feeding abilities. After discussing Grant with her supervisor, she called me this afternoon with a new recommendation. It seems her supervisor has had success with getting babies with a poor sucking mechanism (which he definitely has) to transition from bottle feeding to breastfeeding (I had expressed my desire to exclusively breastfeed and get rid of the bottles). So our plan is to go meet with her next week and see if she can help us. I'll let you know how it goes.