I just got back from Children's and I think we have found some answers to Nathan's eating trouble. They did a swallow study on him which means he had to drink barium while they x-ray his throat. They determined that he is aspirating thin liquids. That is why he is coughing and choking during the feedings. He is aspirating the liquid on the way down and then aspirating it again on the way up when he refluxes. She compared it to when people get drunk and vomit and then choke on their vomit...I know...nice analogy. Nathan has actually been doing a fantastic job of protecting himself against the liquids going into his lungs. When he coughs throughout the day and at night he is protecting himself from aspirating. Many babies who have this are sick all the time from the liquid going into their lungs. When he is gasping for air that is him working through the reflux and the aspiration that is occurring on thew way up. We have been very lucky so far. If we would have gone much longer we probably would have started to see weight loss and him start to get sick.
This is explains so much of what he is going through. The crying and fussiness is all a defense mechanism. Babies are soooo smart. She said to keep him upright as much as possible. She was so happy when I said I had him napping in a swing....unfortunately we just stopped that habit. We have to thicken his feedings at a specific rate until we see the symptoms diminish. Hopefully, that will stop the aspiration on the way down, diminish the coughing and crying which will help the reflux. It is all a process, but we will get him on the right path soon. It is much easier to deal with the day to day when you know what you are dealing with. I just hope he gets better because it is scary to know his crying is choking is because he has been choking on his food. We now have to work with the delayed gastric emptying to see if how he handles the rice cereal in the bottle. That will give us more information.
I feel like I finally got some answers today. She gave me a big hug once we saw the aspiration on the camera and said we finally found an answer!
Beth,
ReplyDeleteDana and I were driving home from a parent meeting together last night and she read this to me....I felt like a sigh of relief came over me at the end. It’s just so good to have some answers. You are not crazy, you know what your child needs. It’s unfortunate that it took this long to find things out. Makes you wonder why pediatricians don’t know more about infants...why does it take seeing specialists to get real answers? At least they know who to send us to.
You are so incredibly strong, Beth. I don’t know how you are getting through this with such a calm and level head. Nathan is so blessed.