Hi everybody - Happy Easter,

        I recently had a baby who was a dedicated tongue sucker. Of course
this wasn't the only problem: mom had stadol, flat nipples, vac extraction,
baby had one bottle (1st feed - due to hypoglycemia).  Every time we got
this guy (term baby - LGA) to breast, he would take one or two promising
sucks and then make a lot of weird slurping sounds.  Gently moving him
proved him to be sucking on his own tongue (no question about it - would
have been funny had my back not been hurting from bending over mom all day
:) .  Happily, he turned out to be a champeen cupfeeder - dad was great at
it.  I limited the attempts to 15 minutes at a time to decrease frustration,
started mom pumping and banned rubber nipples.  Just before discharge,
latched on for ten minutes!! Slowly got better there after.
        My question is what can you do about tongue suckers??  Could I have
done anything differently?  Do they all get better?  Was it in-utero habit
made worse by a traumatic birth?

                                Thanks,
                                Debbie


         Destiny is not a matter of chance but a matter of choice.
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     Debbie Codding, RN   Mother-Infant Unit, Naval Hospital Oak Harbor
        (Whidbey Island), Washington state    [log in to unmask]