Feeding Therapy
What is the Feeding Clinic?
Our feeding clinic is designed to help families transform mealtimes from stressful experiences into enjoyable ones while working together to achieve meaningful goals. We aim to empower your family to thrive, not just get by.
Infants
Feeding tube
Difficulty gaining weight or failure to thrive
Tongue, lip, and/or cheek ties
Difficulty latching when bottle feeding or breast feeding
Gas including excessive fussiness
Spitting up
Reflux
Fluid loss during feeding
Frequent hiccups
Clicking sounds during feeding
Painful breast feeding
Trouble with transiting to solids or sippy cup
Toddler/Children
Picky eater
Gagging
Coughing during or after bites
Making bad faces when eating solids
Unable to drink from straw
Feeding tube
Unable to use utensils
Tongue, lip and/or cheek ties
Difficulty tolerating meals
The Feeding Team
Our feeding team is made up of Occupational Therapists and Speech Language Pathologists to provide a whole child team approach with feeding deficits. Both OTs and SLPs have Master’s Degrees and other specialized trainings like TOTs and Tummy time. Our OTs find fun and creative ways to help you explore and achieve feeding goals with utensils, foods, and liquids.
Our SLPs are experts at the anatomy of your mouth, throat and larynx. They help you identify anatomical differences impacting progress and teach exercises and techniques needed to achieve safe and effective feedings to maintain weight and hydration. If you or your child experience any of the symptoms listed above, you may benefit from feeding therapy. The symptoms listed may seem easy to overlook but they create serious issues with overall health and nutrition.
TOTS
Tethered oral tissue or “tongue, lip, or cheek ties” can create huge barriers for feeding and development. Tethered tongue tissue can lead to body wide concerns including delayed gross motor milestones, ‘flathead’ (plagiocephaly) or ‘wryneck’ (torticollis), as well as upper extremity and fine motor delays.
TUMMY TIME
Tummy time is the practice of placing a baby on their stomach while they are awake and supervised. It helps develop their neck, shoulder, back, and core muscles, which are crucial for motor skills such as lifting the head, rolling over, sitting up, crawling, and walking. Starting from birth, sessions can be 3-5 minutes several times a day, increasing as the baby grows stronger. By two months, aim for 15-30 minutes daily.