It is not unusual for infants to have
certain food-related issues. This can include but are not limited to difficulty
in sucking breast milk, spitting up, rejecting any kind of new food and most commonly,
refusing to eat at certain times. Some of them may also have problems with
grabbing the food properly, inability to chew and suck etc. Let’s go through some
of the essential pointers that will tell you more and help you decide whether
or not you need to opt for swallowing therapy for children:
- Dysphagia can Occur at Different Stages – Dysphagia is the medical term for feeding and swallowing disorders in infancy or in adults. Talking about infants, it is divided into various stages such as:
- Oral Stage: This
stage consists of chewing, sucking, moving foods and/or the liquids down
the throat. But this is difficult for them.
- Pharyngeal Stage: In
this stage, the infant starts to swallow and move the food down their
throat. The mechanism is such that the food doesn’t enter the airway and
hence, there is no choking.
- Esophageal Stage: In
this stage, the openings of the esophagus relaxes and tightens, thereby pushing
the food in the stomach.
- How to detect problems with infant feeding and swallowing: Some of the sure-shot ways to detect eating disorders in your
baby include:
- Being
extra fussy or lacking alertness while feeding
- Refusing
to eat certain liquid food items
- Difficulty
in eating different textures of food
- Moving
the body and the back during feeding
- Long
feeding times
- Issues
in chewing
- Frequent
coughing or gagging during feeding
- Lots of
drooling
- Frequently
spitting the food or throwing up
- Poor
weight gain or growth issues
- Recurring
pneumonia
- Nasal stuffiness and hoarse/breathy voice
Calling
it a Day
These symptoms also tell us that the infants
who have feeding and swallowing issues are at an increased risk of dehydration,
lung diseases and suffer from poor nutrition. If you find any of these signs in
your baby, you need to contact a therapist who can help you diagnose the exact
problem accurately. They will use their expertise to make sure that your little
one can eat properly and therefore, get all the essential nutrients. Now that
you have a fair share of knowledge on this, you can also help other moms and
their kids, should you see them having similar problems. For more such
write-ups, keep watching this space.