Table of Contents for all blog posts
Oral Exercises help a baby improve feeding skills!
The uterus is a tight place, and birth is a bumpy ride! All babies need some time and a bit of help, to “unwind” post-birth - some more/some less. For babies with oral tension (possible ties), torticollis and other body tension/asymmetry, bodywork is especially important. For more info about ties and bodywork - which are very connected to the topic of oral exercises - please check those linked pages along with the information on this page!
Starting Oral Exercises - basic set of skills - tongue lateralizing (side to side motion), suck training, palate work (to desensitize a gag, for example), chewing for jaw strength, stretching for the cheeks, and more.
Here are a few great videos showing my first go-tos for the basic set of Infant Oral Exercises:
Infant Suck Training Exercises by LA Lactation
Infant Oral Exercises by Lisa Lahey
Facial Massage and Oral Exercises by LA Lactation
Oral Motor Exercises by Mighty Kiddos
I recommend to do these exericses (or any portion of them) 3-5 times per day for a few minutes. Diaper changes or when the baby is on your lap are both great opportunities to do these. Keep your sessions short and sweet, and have fun with them - make up silly sounds and words to enjoy with your baby!
Once the baby is suckling on your finger, start to do a “tug of war” to strengthen the suction.
Then challenge the baby’s ability to keep the suckling going even if the mouth is wider by tugging on the chin while the baby is sucking on your finger.
Ultimately we want the baby to be able to keep their tongue fully extended, lifted up and cupped (like in this post)
The Sleeping Tongue Posture Hold - excellent for promoting tongue strength, closed mouth breathing, and also can be used after a tongue tie release to do tongue stretches.
Extension of its use post-frenotomy (tie-release) - technique good for any baby though
Check my video library page for more ideas!
And here are some more videos with oral exercises to use (many have overlapping ideas with the videos above)
Infant Suck Training by Lisa Lahey, RN, IBCLC, OMT
Infant Oral and Suckling Exercises by Bryna Sampey, IBCLC
Facial and Intra-Oral Massage/Movement by Jennifer Tow, IBCLC
Enhancing oral exercises with toys and teethers - There are many that enhance oral exericses (this is just a small sample, I’m happy to send a list with links for places to get these items)
Fantastic video overview of oral motions and how to use toys/teethers to enhance them by Giselle Tadros, PT (Milk Matters PT - see Instagram page link below)
Using vibration, or brain mapping to enhance exercises -
Instagram pages to follow for oral exercises (and more!)
You can see me doing a lot of the ideas from this page on this Instagram post, or from my Instagram Page (LactationSolutionsOfPrinceton)
LittleMoversPT - she also sells a video course
Starfish Therapies - she has a great YouTube page as well
The LA Lactation Lady - she has a great YouTube page as well