I don't know how long I'll have to type...I have a babe in my lap
My middle son had horrible feeding problems, was diagnosed failure to thrive at 4 weeks old, and eventually we discovered food intolerances. He had a whole host of other medical issues, including numerous birth defects, and we discovered at 11 months that he has a genetic syndrome involving one of his chromosomes. He's almost 3 now, is still failure to thrive, still has food intolerances, but his feeding is finally normal!!
In his case, he had a lip tie (five, actually, one middle frenulum is somewhat common, but he had five frenulums completely tethering his upper lip to his gum), he had a malformed hard palate (very high, narrow, and arched), a malformed soft palate (a submucous cleft and something called VPI), and he also had severe dysphagia (a swallowing disorder) that caused him to aspirate (fluids went into his lungs when he swallowed). In addition he had several airway defects (laryngomalacia, tracheomalacia, and bronchomalacia) that caused him to have difficulty breathing. He also had severe reflux, and because of his palate issues, his refluxed out of his nose.
Whew!! Oh, he also had hypotonia, particularly in his face, so he couldn't move his tongue correctly, he had no peristalsis action at all.
DESPITE ALL THAT, he was able to breastfeed!!! It took a ton of work, and a lot of luck, but we did it. The luck is because I have oversupply and never lose my milk ejaculation reflex, so he didn't have to work to get the milk, it just sprayed into his mouth. I also was nursing my oldest son, so he helped keep my supply up despite his brother's poor feeding.
His food intolerances ended up being dairy and soy, and at first it really sucked to cut those from my diet. But on the bright side, I lost a lot of weight! I also cut way back on corn and eggs for a while just in case. When he started eating solid foods around 8-9 months old it was pretty disastrous, he gagged on everything until I learned that he couldn't do purees. He did much better with small chunks of food (he could track it in his mouth easier). I also learned that he did better with strong flavored foods vs mild foods, again he seemed to be able to transfer it in his mouth easier.
For a while I added extra fat to his bottles of expressed milk. To do that I would pump milk, then let it sit in the fridge. When it separated, I skimmed the fat off the top of one bottle and added it to another bottle. That way the fat content was "doubled" (probably not really double, but increased at least). The bottle that I took the fat out of I just froze that for mixing with solid foods later (or I gave it to my son or snuck into my husband's food, shh don't tell him!) This is only possible if you have extra milk, of course.
Oops, I just got puked on...I'll be back later
