Miles has been having a few difficulties with feeding. His mouth is smaller, causing him to have trouble squeezing the stage 1 nipples — or in the case of Vent Aire bottles, “slow” stage. It was taking him an hour or more to down a single ounce with those. So, we moved on to the ”fast flow” nipples (We’re still not sure why Vent Aire doesn’t make a “medium flow” nipple). That was working better, but almost too fast.
Miles began exhibiting difficulties breathing while eating. Sometimes, it seemed like he would be choking. We tried going back to the “slow” nipples, but some of the breathing symptoms persisted.
We tried Doc Brown bottles, but the results were the same.
We tried the Avent bottles, but Miles didn’t care for the nipples.
Finally, we scheduled a swallow study to see if there was any way they can tell what the problem was. After trying several of the same bottle/nipple combinations we tried, they began adding rice cereal to the formula. It turns out that Miles has a case of Aspiration. Thickening the formula with rice had helped Miles gain more control over the flow of formula so that he could time his breathing better. It all worked great at the hospital.
It was a different story when we got home. They suggested we do a 1-tablespoon to 1-ounce ratio of rice to formula. That seemed to be took thick for Miles at home, so we moved to 2-tablespoons per 3 ounces of formula. That has been working much better.
But he’s still having some breathing issues. From time to time, he will absolutely freak out and it’s as if he’s hyper ventilating (maybe he is). He gets so worked up, that trying to feed him becomes an absolute nightmare. He had the perfect feeding this morning at 5 am. Calm breathing, smooth sucking, and controlled swallowing. I took 3 ounces and burped in 20 minutes. Three hours later, all bets were off. It was as if he had forgotten what to do with the nipple and when to breathe.
We’re getting better with our patience, but I hope that one of these days something will click and we can take a load of stress off of our backs.
2 Comments
1 Nia wrote:
Wow, poor guy. Did they mention reflux as a possible issue? That sounds alot like the nightmare we had with our little guy for the first 6 months of his life. He even aspirated in the carseat once (a few minutes after a bottle) and I had to pull over to the side of the rode to get him out of the seat so he could breathe. He is 2.5 yrs now and still fighting the reflux.
2 Matthew wrote:
He’s already on Zantac for reflux issues. He is usually pretty good with his breathing, but it just gets wonky when he’s freaking out for a bottle or diaper change.