Swallow test

I think that the final challenge for Noah to pass before we can bring him home is getting him to take his feeds orally. Therapists have been working with him on sucking for a maybe two weeks now. They only try once a day, though, to get him to take a bottle. Today Noah had a "swallow test", a test where they feed him something with a dye in it then watch where it goes. There is a grading scale in which the score of one is the safest and the score of eight is the most dangerous. Noah scored a three because he has some of the fluid he is swallowing going into his lungs. As he sucks, the fluid is forced back out, so it’s not staying in the lungs. What this means, my wife says, is that we will have to thicken his breast milk/formula when we bring him home.