So, this week with Madi's PT session, we had a speech therapist come and do a consultation. This lady was extremely knowledgable!! I learned so much with her visit!
First of all.....when I think about the fact that Madi has "low tone", I always think about her large muscles and that the low tone will slow down her sitting, crawling, walking, etc. But, I never have really thought too much about the fact that the whole mouth is a bunch of muscles. So, the low tone in the mouth will affect her eating, talking, holding in her tongue, the way she holds her mouth, etc.
So, she showed me how to do facial massage. It's designed to increase her awareness with her face and to "wake" up and tone her muscles in her face.
Next......one of the main reasons why people with Ds tongues stick out. Well, the palate on the top of the mouth is two separate bones that are not fused together until the baby is about 1 year old. (It's very similar to the way the skull bones are not fused at the top of the head and you have the soft spot.) During that 1st year until the bones are fused together, it is really important to have the tongue in the mouth. It makes it form a nice arch in the shape of the tongue. If the tongue isn't in, the bones fuse and make a very shallow arch, which the tongue really doesn't fit into resulting in it sticking out.
So, she has shown us how to do Palatal massage. We are kind of guiding the bones to form a nice arch for her tongue to fit into.
Next thing I learned.....a lot of times when you see people with Ds, it looks like they are sticking out their jaw and you don't really see their upper lip. This is because the upper lip muscles never develop the tone that is needed and the lip just kind of disappears in the bottom lip and jaw. To help with that, we are using Toothettes (it kind of looks like a small sponge on a popsicle stick). We place it in between her upper lip and gums and roll it to stimulate the upper lip muscles.
We are supposed to do all these new exercises with her 4-5 times a day. It sounds like a lot of new stuff and time consuming. But, really it is not. The whole sequence of exercises takes just a couple of minutes and we are to do it right before feeding.
I am really excited about this speech therapist. She was extremely nice, explained everything and was so happy to see me starting these type of exercises for her mouth at an early age. A lot of kids don't see a speech therapist until they are 1-2 years old but she's already starting at 3 1/2 months!!
She's going to come out again once we have started solids with Madi and have been doing it for a couple of weeks. She will kind of tweak the way we are feeding her and also give us some more exercises to do for her mouth.
1 comment:
It sounds like you've got a great ST!! We started Sammi's ST at just a few months old, too. At first I thought it was weird to be doing that, but our ST did many of the things yours is doing. There are a lot of STs out there that don't practice oral motor therapy, which is so important for our little ones to develop that muscle tone in their mouths. Sammi has a huge underbite, another issue with people with Ds, and another reason their lower lips are more prominent. We'll get that corrected with some sort of appliance at some point soon. I'm glad to hear you've gotten started early! I always cringe when I hear that counties won't offer ST services until the children are so much older, because that first year is SO important.
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