Preterm infants develop the skills necessary to begin oral feeding as their health stabilizes and as they reach a postconceptional age that supports coordination of breathing and swallowing with oralmotor functioning. The time from initiation of oral feeding to full oral feedings (with adequate intake for growth and maintenance of physiologic stability) can vary from days to months for the preterm infant. The approach to feeding the infant during this transition period must be developmentally supportive and tailored to meet the needs of the individual. To accomplish this, caregivers-notably nurses and parents-need to communicate about the specific skills that the infant has gained, about skills that are emerging, and about skills that the infant has not yet developed. The Early Feeding Skills (EFS) Assessment is a checklist for assessing infant readiness for and tolerance of feeding and for profiling the infant's developmental stage regarding specific feeding skills: the abilities to remain engaged in feeding, organize oral-motor functioning, coordinate swallowing with breathing, and maintain physiologic stability. This article introduces the EFS.Neonatal clinicians, clinicians who work with families during the early postdischarge period, and parents of preterm infants are in an important position to observe and support the development of an emergent motor skill: oral feeding. Oral feeding skills have commonly been conceptualized by health care providers as an infant's ability to organize and coordinate oralmotor functions to efficiently consume enough calories for growth. Early feeding skills are much more complex than this, however. They also involve the infant's ability to (1) engage and remain engaged in a physiologically and behaviorally challenging task, (2) organize oralmotor movements so as to have long-term functional benefits, (3) coordinate breathing with swallowing to avoid prolonged apnea or aspiration of fluids, and (4) regulate the depth and frequency of breathing to maintain physiologic stability.Motor skill development corresponds to changes in an infant's brain, body, and experience. 1 According to research, two factors affect progression in ability to feed orally: the infant's state of health 2-6 and oral feeding experience. [7][8][9][10][11] According to other research, neuromaturation of the following contributes to an individual infant's skill in feeding: the ability to regulate oxygen, 11,12 development of alertness, 13-15 and development of sucking strength and organization of the sucking pattern. 16,17 External influences can also change the nature of the task. These include the size and speed of flow of the fluid bolus, 18-20 the impact of nasogastric tubes in place during feeding, 21 and the type of feeding support provided by the caregiver. [22][23][24][25][26] During its emergent phase, motor skill expression varies considerably. 27 Early feeding skills can vary from feeding to feeding and even across a given feeding. Some infants adapt and improve in skill as the feeding pro...
Objective To examine inter-relationships among stress due to infant appearance and behavior in the NICU, parental role alteration stress in the NICU, depressive symptoms, state anxiety, post-traumatic stress symptoms, and daily hassles exhibited by African American mothers of preterm infants and to determine whether there were sub-groups of mothers based on patterns of psychological distress. Method 177 African American mothers completed questionnaires on their psychological distress at enrollment during infant hospitalization and 2, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months after term. Results Psychological distress measures were inter-correlated. There were four latent classes of mothers: the low distress class with low scores on all measures; the high NICU-related stress class with high infant appearance and parental role stress and moderate scores on other measures; the high depressive symptoms class with high depressive symptoms and state anxiety and moderately elevated scores on NICU-related stress and post-traumatic stress symptoms; the extreme distress class with the highest means on all measures. Infants in the high stress class were sicker than infants in the other classes. The extreme distress class mothers averaged the lowest educational level. The classes differed on distress measures, worry about the child, and parenting stress through 24 months with the extreme distress class having the highest values. Conclusion Although different types of maternal psychological distress were substantially related, there were distinct sub-groups of mothers that were identifiable in the NICU. Moreover, these sub-groups continued to differ on trajectories of distress and on their perceptions of the infants and parenting through 24 months after term.
Very preterm (VP, ≤30 wk gestational age) infants are at risk for impaired lung function, which significantly limits their ability to eat. A semielevated side-lying (ESL) position is a feeding strategy that may improve oral feeding by supporting breathing during feeding. The study evaluated the efficacy of the ESL position compared with the semielevated supine (ESU) position on physiological stability and feeding performance of bottle-fed VP infants. Using a within-subject crossover design, 6 VP infants were bottle-fed twice on 1 day, in both the ESL and ESU positions in a random order. Physiological stability (heart rate, oxygen saturation [SaO2], and respiratory characteristics) and feeding performance (percent intake, proficiency, efficiency, and duration of feeding) were measured before and/or during feeding. Very preterm infants fed in the ESL position demonstrated significantly less variation in heart rate, less severe and fewer decreases in heart rate, respiratory rate that was closer to the prefeeding state, shorter and more regular intervals between breaths, and briefer feeding-related apneic events. No significant differences for SaO2 or feeding performance were found. The findings indicate that the ESL position may support better regulation of breathing during feeding, thereby allowing VP infants to better maintain physiological stability throughout feeding.
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