The ultrasound study that found babies pressing their tongues against 
the bottle nipple to guard against excessive flow found this behavior 
almost exclusively in preterm (33 week ga) infants, not in the term 
infants they tested.

Bu'Lock, F. 1990 Development of Co-Ordination of Sucking, Swallowing and 
Breathing:. Dev Med Child Neurol 32(8 August):669-678.

This behavior is different from tongue thrust, which is a forceful 
outward movement of the tongue, often seen in low tone infants and 
considered by occupational therapists to be due to "fixing" to 
compensate for the reduced tone.

A similar but symmetrical behavior (equal in and out movements) were 
seen in my group's ultrasound studies of breastfeeding infants with 
partial (posterior) tongue-ties. We call this "sliding" of the tongue. 
This movement was replaced by the normal wavelike sucking movements 
after frenotomy. I can't say a lot more until we publish.

Catherine Watson Genna, IBCLC  NYC

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