Swallow Study Failure

I took Scarlett to St. Joseph's Hospital for an outpatient procedure called a Modified Barrium Swallow (MBS) study on Friday. When Scarlett was around 2 weeks old, they noticed that she coughed a lot and did a MBS study on her that revealed that she was aspirating her food. This means that instead of the milk going down her esophagus it is going down her windpipe. This is bad. It means she can get fluid in her lungs and it could cause pneumonia.

So ever since she was 2 weeks old I've had to thicken her milk with gel packs made by a company called Simply Thick. The thickening of the milk helps Scarlett to swallow the milk instead of aspirating it.

They said she would probably outgrow this condition and I was hoping that yesterday's study would show that she wasn't aspirating her milk anymore... but no such luck. She is still aspirating her food, so I have to continue to give her the thickening agent in her milk. It's okay. It's not that big of a deal. I'm already used to adding it to her bottles. It's more of a nusiance, but it's a small price to pay for such a healthy (relatively speaking), strong, growing baby.

I was just really hoping to get rid of it since it costs money for the Simply Thick and it also causes constipation, which means I have to give Scarlett stool softener. But like I said... I'm just glad that she's still doing so well considering her heart condition.