Kristie McNealy, MD

For those of you who are struggling with getting your babies to full feeds, or remember your baby’s struggles from the not so distant past, Judy at Tiggers Don’t Jump wrote a great post on the topic. Judy is a NICU nurse, so she’s had plenty of experience working with preemies who are trying to get the whole suck, swallow, breathe thing figured out.

Our own daughter struggles to learn how to eat. She had her feeds stopped twice – once for NEC and another time for a possible bowel obstruction. Once she did get to work on bottle feeding, she had a weak suck, and most of what she ate seemed to leak back out of her mouth. Bottles were such a struggle, no one in the NICU had the patience to even try and work on breastfeeding with us.

For those of you out there who are parents of preemies, what was your experience with those early feedings?

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