Swallow Study #1

Tytan is 6 weeks old and never ever taken anything by mouth. He is on a feeding tube because he doesn't have the sucking reflux that he should. I guess this happens to a lot of heart babies because they don't let them eat when they're born like a typical newborn, so they go weeks without eating by mouth and lose that natural suckling process. They have to learn again. He wasn't ready when he was in the hospital so they sent us home and told us to really work with him on sucking a binky at home. They would do a swallow study in a couple weeks to see if we could start him on a bottle. I'm unable to nurse him because I have to fortify his milk, so I pump and add formula for calories then put it in the feeding bag to go through his tube! It is a bit of a pain but he's beyond worth it! He is on a continuous drip and recieves 18 ml an hour all day long. We add milk to the bag every 3 hours.

Today we went to Primary's and did a swallow study. It is an X-ray procedure and basically they give him some barium and with X-ray watch him swallow and for aspiration. Tyt was a little champ. He did so good and I'm so proud of him! He did not pass for thin liquids, regular milk, but he did pass for thickens liquid. So it just makes our job a little more time consuming but I'm so ready for him to have a bottle and so is he. So now we mix his milk then add a stuff called "thick it" and it makes the milk like a syrup like consistency. Poor kid but at least he will get to eat a little bit! For now we try the bottle feeding every 3 hours then his feeding tube for 3 hours and so on! He loves to eat so far, so hopefully he goes to town and we get rid of the tube soon!! Wish us luck!!