<  A finger or a
bottle teat provides proprioceptive input to the mouth on the center of
the tongue, which stimulates central grooving and extension of the
tongue, unless the flow is so great that the baby retracts the tongue to
press the tonguetip against the offending outlet.
     The finger can feel the tongue motions, and be repositioned in the
infant's mouth to attempt to correct tongue movements that are
dysfunctional or compensatory- for example, if the infant "tongue humps"
(elevates the back half of the tongue forcefully), the fingertip can be
angled down in the mouth each time the tongue "bunks" against the
fingertip to increase the baby's awareness of this motion.  Over time,
this helps the baby correct it.>

Thank you Catherine for this explanation. It now makes a lot of sense to
me for the baby whose suck is the problem.

I have only closely observed one family using fingerfeeding, and had made
up my mind that it was just as addictive as a bottle, so why go to the
bother.

But now I realize that with my client, the problem was not with her
baby's suck. It was with her "latch-defying" nipple-areolar complex. And
fingerfeeding was being used primarily to get the feedings into the baby
so as not to habituate the baby to a rubber nipple.

The father took particular pride in helping out this way. I realize in
retrospect that I should have been more proactive and careful in teaching
him. I believe he was periodically vigorously moving the finger about in
the mouth as I have too often seen (and done) with a bottle in a nursery,
"waking the baby up" when he took a moment out to rest his oral muscles.

Too late I noted that it may have been he who helped create part of the
baby's subsequent oral aversiveness to the mother's attempts to offer the
breast. It seemed to create a whole new set of bad habits to break and a
whole other set of interventions to use before we finally got the baby to
accept the bare breast consistently.

If and when I have occasion to recommend it again, I believe I will
approach it more wisely as a result of how you illuminated the subject
for me.

Jean
*******************************************
K. Jean Cotterman RNC, IBCLC
Dayton, Ohio USA

________________________________________________________________
YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET!
Juno now offers FREE Internet Access!
Try it today - there's no risk!  For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.

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