B's had an appointment with his food therapist today and they decided that they wanted him to have a swallow study to make sure he isn’t aspirating when he swallows liquids.
His last study was when he was still in the NICU at only 2 months old, at which point he was still having a large amount of aspiration on his milk.
at that time it was the hard for him and we never saw him take anywhere near a full feed by mouth. (Which he promptly puked up in spectacular fashion – aspiration was only one of our problems.) You see he is the kid that has aspirations when he sleeps, causing him to wake up a zillion times a night. Making it hard for his brother to sleep and for me to get up and comfort him and make sure he is okay. We need a few answers.
We were lucky this time to be able to have Daddy with us. Brother was able to stay with MeeMa and Pop. F was in good hands & I am sure he was being spoiled while we were able to get some one on one time with B.
Anyways, we have a small reason to believe he is still aspirating now. At times when he drinks small amounts of water from sippy cups he chokes and coughs, then other times without a problem and has had pneumonia
(a tell-tale sign of a kid who aspirates).
With that we wanted to be sure, so there we were.
B did exactly as I thought he would. He was slightly anxious in the waiting room, but completely lost his mind as soon as we were brought down to the radiology suite. He screamed like he was being stabbed, and was only momentarily calmed by iPads, bubbles, and songs. But in the end, I got him to calm down enough to take a few sips from his cup
(before he realized the barium was nasty),
and they saw five or six successful swallows!
We have to use thicker food and our food issues are far from over, but we did get a few answers and a few things that will start to help.
We will be back in a few months to check in and do this test all over again.
The thing I want most for him is to not struggle. To not hurt, to not panic when he chokes & aspirates.
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