Laryngomalacia anyone?

[NurseLaurie]

My pediatrician thinks that my babe may have laryngomalacia. Does anyone know more about this? she says it's nothing to worry about, but what I read says it can rarely lead to laryngeal collapse. Anyone with a "soft larynx" baby?

[corysmilk]

my son had a trachia (sp?) tug. I don't think it is the same thing. But his throat would cave in when he breathed, not every breath but it was really scary and he out grew it at about 6 months.
I googled it and read a bit about it. I hope someone chimes in to help you

[lilyka]

My dd had this. it really was no big deal although she did have real trouble breathing a couple times and would have trouble if she had a cough or got to worked up crying. it was just a matter of calming her down, giving her a little giggle, repositioning her. the most helpful thing was having her sleep on her stomach. well actually she didn't sleep at all on her back because after a few minutes she would start to have trouble breathing and wake herself up :. but tummy sleeping fixed the problem entirely. Once we rolled over she became the easiest best sleepingbaby on the planet.

as for eating it caused some irritating little problems. She was also tounge tied which further complicated things. I know she couldn't suck swallow and breath all latched on so she would let go every now and then for a breath. kinda suck suck swallow suck suck swallow let go breath latch repeat. but she was highly skilled at latching and never had to be helped back on. b Not sure if that was related to the issues or just one further quirky thing in her (she was by far my easist but had all kinds of little strange quirks). she gained fine. she was 20 pounds by 6 months which is good by any standard. and she drooled. a lot. I mean . . .really a lot. easier than swallowing I guess. she started solids at around 6 months and didn't have any trouble with them.

she would also make a seal sort of sound when drawing air in (often) and constantly sounded congested. it took them forever to diagnose it (actually I finally came here after months of guessing and several chest x-rays and someone had the answer for me in about 15 minutes. she was pretty text book. then we saw a different Dr and she also nailed it within 60 seconds of walking into the exam room. it is pretty common as far as non-crisis birth defects go.)

they start to outgrow it by about 6 months and she was completely over it by 2 (and then it was like only one or two cases of her having trouble between 1 and 2)

so over all she sounded funny and couldn't spend a lot of time flat on her back (but most babies aren't keen on that anyway) and had to sleep on her tummy. there is no way I would have left her in her own room for the night though. I always woke up when she had trouble breathing (because she would make that seal sound really loudly and trash about- hard to miss) but wouldn't count on it if she wasn't literally sleeping in my face.

in general there isn't much that can or should be done. Dr. wanted to do an upper GI but we opted not to because all it would have told them was that she for sure had it. great. barium, starving my child, and just so they could tell us something we already knew. if it is bad enough for corrective surgery you will know it by the time they are a couple weeks old. otherwise it is just irritating and makes coughs and colds and feeding a little more complicated. no big. nothing to frett over.

and if yuohave any questions feel free to ask. getting things diagnosed really was theb iggest complication as we thoguht our baby had this amazing cold that just wouldn't go away. once we knew it was a just a physical thingy andn ot anillness everything else was easy.