Living where I do, hours of travel away from any other IBCLCs, I've
found books to be among my very best friends, along with this list.
One year ago today (it's the 9th here as I write this) I first came in
contact with the case that changed my life and really sent me to the
bookshelf to read up on choking in the absence of any problems with
tongue mobility or airway anatomy.  Two books were of great help to
me, and while it wasn't the first time I'd used them to look up
things, it was the first time an apparent breastfeeding problem put me
on the trail of a heart defect, and because the heart defect was
picked up serendipitously before she had started to decompensate, my
granddaughter was in excellent general condition when she had her
life-saving surgery last March.  It's her birthday today, and will we
ever be celebrating!   She'll be enjoying whatever cake there is,
after it has been filtered through her mother so she can get it in
liquid form :-)   The case report I posted about her is in the
archives from approx mid-March 2011 for anyone interested.

The baby Sonya described who chokes and swallows air doesn't sound
like a cardiac case to me, but the books I used are ones I think no
practicing IBCLC should be without access to.  One is Wolf and Glass's
'Feeding and Swallowing Disorders in Infancy', which is good as a
general work on swallowing disorders and the other is Cathy Genna's
'Supporting sucking skills in breastfeeding infants' which is about
exactly that. Besides editing the whole book, Cathy herself wrote
several of the chapters.  If you are always near a medical library
that has these books when you are working, you can survive without
your own copies.  I'm not and I couldn't.  I have no financial
interest in either book.  They complement each other well but if you
are on a tight budget and want to get just one of them, I would say
get Cathy's, which is aimed more specifically at the things we see.

Wolf and Glass: ISBN 076 164190 4
Watson Genna: ISBN 13: 978 0 7637 4037 5  /  ISBN 10: 0 7637 4037 3

Back to Sonya's choking, air-swallowing baby with the sucking blister
- sounds likely it's oral anatomy behind the problems and should be
investigated promptly.  If there is nothing unusual about the tongue
or labial frenula, keep looking deeper - airway or heart.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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