Hi Lactnet!   I am still set no-mail for the forseeable future, struggling to
get through a long backlog of other obligations, but this evening I just
spent some time in the week's archives for the first time in months, and what
a pleasure.  Especially grateful for Barbara Wilson-Clay's recent posts on
babies with feeding trouble, and also for the thread on bed-sharing (again)
and in particular Helen Ball's description of her research.

To add a small note to the feeding-trouble thread:   I think Barbara is so
right on about the OT work for babies with tone and other muscle or oral
issues.  I'm becoming a real OT groupie these days.  The only thing I would
have added is that OTs who do sensory integration work always think about the
mouth as organizing the whole body (as we know obviously from babies sucking
to organize everything else -- or adults who need to chew their pencil while
they write, or whatever).  They have various strategies to help the mouth
regain its organizing functions, sometimes by doing other things --
proprioceptive stimulation of other body areas, etc, vestibular arousal of
the autonomic system -- that are not so obvious to me until I see them but
wow me when I do.  I haven't heard about how this stuff is applied to
neonates but the theory I have read seems to imply that it would be.  So
those who work with occupational therapists in cases of babies with feeding
trouble might ask them about whether sensory integration therapy is a style
of intervention that they use.

My other, quite personal, note to add was on the co-sleeping-position thread.
 We are lately -- post Yemima's recent bronchitis -- reasserting that we
would like her to sleep in her own bed until the wee hours, and then she can
come in with us, and she's reasonably OK with that.  But it has been very
striking that in her crib she ALWAYS sleeps on her stomach, and when she gets
in with us she ALWAYS sleeps on her back.  Every night, same thing.   Of
course she's 18 months old, but still one does wonder, eh?

Ah! I feel better now!   Back to the editorial salt mines!

Elisheva Urbas
in lactnet no-mail exile in New York City

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