Feeding Emily

Feeding Emily has become much easier since she got the NAM in, although she was doing quite well with the Pigeon cleft palate nipple and bottle. Here's a great page on different bottles you can use for cleft lip and palate. You can order cleft palate Pigeon nursers from this Candadian Web site (even if you're in the U.S.) or ask your cleft team if they have them on hand. We got a bunch from NYU at a pretty good price.

Anyway, once the NAM was in Emily ate a lot quicker and had to do much less work to get the milk out. This happened because 1) Pigeon nipples are designed to give a "milk reward" to the baby from any action the baby does, e.g., pressing the nipple against her cheek or tongue will extract milk and 2) the NAM gives her lots of surface area to press the nipple against. The combination of the two worked great (since Emily has no palate, she struggled to find a surface to press the nipple against before the NAM was in her mouth. The Pigeon nipple is softer on the bottom and so when she presses her tongue against it, milk automatically squirts down away from her palate - so she rarely has milk come out her nose (unless she spits up - but that's a different, entirely more exoricst-like story). So that's one less thing for me to worry about - she can eat. She seems to be a snacker though, and that may be because she's just getting used to the NAM.