denise you don't say how much baby now weighs. At 111 days after 27 wk gest I guess he is now 42 wks corrected age, right? But with a start like that he is probably having lots of factors confound his feeding besides the palate, like lower muscle tone, stamina issues, and btw, how is his lung function? (noted 61 days on vent). I don't think the palate will necessarily give you more problems as he gets more feeds but it may be a challenge to get a good latch/seal. One thing that you might try is a nipple shield (small size of course), since there is a recent journal article (check archives) reporting a study where prem babes took about 2x as much I think with the shield. they had better intraoral stability and could extract more milk. good for you on the breastfeeding help that turned the wt around! Laurie Wheeler, RN, MN, IBCLC Violet Louisiana, s.e. USA _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. *********************************************** 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