After the meeting with the occupational therapist, we now have a bunch of stuff to do to work on Daphne’s feeding. I’m starting to get the hang of giving resistance on her chin when she’s opening and closing her mouth, and she’s getting used to the lip exercises. But neither of us is doing great with the tongue exercises yet. She hates it with the pacifier (as in turning red, looks like she’s choking, and screaming hates it) and I’m not a whole heck of a lot better with my finger yet. I can feel what she’s doing with her tongue (no wonder my nipples hurt!), but she has a strong tongue and it’s hard to press against it without REALLY pissing her off. But we’re working on it.

It’s probably just the resistance on the chin getting a better suck, but feedings have definitely changed since we started this. They are MUCH shorter – 10 minutes on a side is a long feeding – and they’ve been almost all spaced out farther, to at least two hours between feedings. She is still, however, crying like mad for hours in the evening, and we don’t know if it’s too much food in her stomach, too fast of a fill of the stomach, or some other digestive issue. It’s fairly clearly digestive, and gripe water is somewhat helpful (though sometimes she need two doses, and it seems to also be helpful if I drink tea with the same fennel, chamomile, ginger ingredients) and she seems to have some degree of reflux (based on the spitting up and pain she’s displaying), but we’re not sure the best way of dealing with it. At the moment, though, those “now 20 minute” feedings are still close to an hour, as I try to keep her upright and not slumping on her stomach for half an hour after she eats.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we can get the tongue exercises worked out, and she’ll stop trying to squish my nipple to get milk.