Getting premmie baby off the nasal gastric tube

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   Hi, my sister's baby was born at 29 weeks. He has been on the nasal gastric tube since birth and is now 5 months old 'corrected' - 7 months old in total. He managed to breastfeed a tiny bit for a while, and was on the bottle for the first 5 months, so a combination of NGT, BF and bottle for a while. He is still quite small he is being fed by NGT every 3 hours and refusing a bottle or breastfeeding. He is at the low end weight scale for a non-prem baby, so he isn't tiny. The problem is feeding - my sister is scared he has forgotten how to swallow. He won't even take a wee bit of milk on a spoon. He does suck his hands and toys though. She is terrified that he will not learn to swallow or eat solids for years, and at this stage feels he'll be on the NGT forever! She has had advice from so many different people - nurses, GP, speech therapist, nutritionist but her pediatrician insisted he must stay on the tube for now so his feeding progress has gone backwards. Hence now refusing BF or bottles. He is also spitting up 5x a day, obviously he is getting too full. But her paed is insisting on these tube feeds, so there is not much she can do until his weight goes up more. We hope he will eventually take solids - that's the dream! She is even holding out hope he will BF again. 

My sister is at her wit's end. She is booked to begin in a new hospital that has a feeding clinic soon but is still on a wait list. She has little support in Australia as her partner works there, all her family are in NZ. I guess the reason for my post is that I would love to hear of any success stories for weaning premmies off the tube and getting them BF, or onto solids. Any positive stories would really help my sister!

Edited by Louloublue - 27 September 2013 at 5:09pm