Step #1: How I weaned my daughter off her feeding tube - OROFACIAL MASSAGE

As advised and taught in the hospital, the first step was what they called orofacial stimulation. The idea behind it is massaging the child's face in a sequence of moves, just before the feed. It is supposed to trigger the primal instincts of opening the mouth, sucking and swallowing. Consistency is the key.

However, we were not able to establish a routine. We were not able to do it before every feeding. There were many reasons. I was pumping breast milk regularly so often I could not have been present for her scheduled feeding. Due to their workload, nurses often simply did not have the time to do it. But also, to be honest, there was a discrepancy in their know-how.

It became even harder once Ema started to be fed continuously. As milk was dripping throughout the entire day, there was no “starting point” of eating and thus no right time to do the stimulation. It brought us nowhere.

This is not to say it was useless! But it was not miraculous either. At the time, success was when she kept her pacifier in her mouth and held it. We were ecstatic if she sucked on it a bit. But not milk. That continued flowing through the tube for months to come.