My guess is that these babies who  have no diagnosis of reflux and are
"choking" on feeds are simply not ready for BOTTLE feedings. I do a lot of
work in the NICU and right now we are going through a process of trying to
evaluate babies for readiness to feed. Both Wolf and Glass as well as
Marjorie Palmer have published work on this subject. In this day and age the
adage is get them eating and out of the NICU without really taking the baby
into consideration. Studies are showing that we are not getting babies home
any sooner by starting bottle feedings earlier, in fact we are actually
increasing length of stay as we increase apnea and bradycardia associated
with these feeds as well as increasing microaspiration. Just because a baby
shows sucking reflexes does not mean they are ready to feed, why they suck in
utero! They must be able to coordinate suck/swallow and breathing. Usually
this begins to come together about 34 weeks.
Rice cereal will not thicken breastmilk, I have not seen Thick It used so I
do not know if that will work.

Lisa Enger RN BSN IBCLC
Boston, MA

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html