On the morning of New Year's Eve, I took Mia into radiology for her swallowing barium xray. To my surprise, it went fairly smoothly and she was a champ. That doesn't mean that there weren't any tears, but she was hungry enough that she immediately took the barium which allowed them to capture a few good images.
CONCLUSION: They didn't see any aspiration (inhaling milk into her lungs), but the liquids don't go straight down to her tummy either. There is a slight delay before her vocal folds direct the liquid to the right place which we're going to try to solve via a treatment plan. Since she only took 5mL, they weren't able to see her progression after several minutes which is usually when she has the most difficulty. However for now, we're going to assume that she's not aspirating at all and will chalk up her poor eating habits to reflux. We will monitor things and pray that there aren't any indicators of neurological issues that may reveal themselves over time.
TREATMENT PLAN: Here's our game plan for now until I take her back for therapy on Thursday.
1) Continue using the Dr. Brown's bottle + preemie nipple
2) Give her cold expressed milk which will provide one additional stimulus to her system
3) Continue with the reflux meds
She does have a harder time nursing probably because the flow is faster and inconsistent than the bottle. While there's some workarounds, they seem to be fairly inconvenient. I guess that means we'll be trying to get her almost exclusively on a bottle which is fine as I return to work in a few weeks anyway.
Poor Mia. I may have further updates after Thursday's therapy session.
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