Emma had her speech evaluation today (due to her not wanting to spoon feed). They are also recommending speech therapy for her due to her not cooing or babbling as she should.

The evaluator also recommended a video swallow study. What is that...and what is it usually look for?

I know that she said that she might be aspirating and that is one thing that they look for.

Any ideas?

I have not ever had a video swallow done, but I am assuming that they give foods of different consistency to see whether she is swallowing properly and if any food is being aspirated as she eats. I wish I knew more.

Hopefully someone with experience with this test will be able to help you a bit more.

Mason had a swallow study, it's actually very similar to an Upper GI. Instead of laying him flat they had him sitting up. They give the barium to drink and then they watch on video as it goes down. They look to see if they aspirate and all how the general swallong goes.

When mason did it, he did not aspirate but we could see he was swallowing a TON if air, way more than normal. He also did not suck right. It should be suck, swallow, suck, swallow, etc. But Mason would suck 4 times before swallowing. They said his mouth muscles were too tight and sent him for therapy. I don't think it actually did that much, but eventually he got better. I still think the bottle switch and time seemed to help more than anything.

Sebastian will be having this test done on tuesday. At his age he will have food and a bottle to see how he is swallowing. I will post about it after and let you kinow what it was like.

Rylie had a swallow study done when she was 8 wks. She sat in this really comfy chair and I proceeded to give her the bottle I brought from home with the formula in it. The video was actually very interesting because you could really see how she was aspirating her formula. Then the Speech Pathologist thickened her formula a little and I feed her more. We kept on doing this until we were able to get a consistency for her that there was no aspiration happening. It really wasn't that bad and she really just sat there, but she was really young at that time...not like right now. I hope this helps?

Yes, thank you! That lets me know what it is for. I just wonder why the speech evaluator is recommending it. None of the doctors feel that she is aspirating.

I'll have to call the GI on Monday and let her know what the ST is recommending and see if she goes along with it.

They are probably recommending it because that is the sort of thing they deal with. personally, I feel all moderate to heavy refluxers should have that test done. It is very interesting to see. Luckily for us, mason did not aspirate, but like I said, we found a totally different problem. So it's always worth checking.

As someone said above, you can bring your own bottle and formula which would give you a mroe acurate reading as well.