Facilitating Functional Infant Feeding through Skills Mastery & Collaborative Care

Oral dysfunction, frequently a result of oral restrictions, is a common cause of breastfeeding challenges, yet breastfeeding dyads often face an even greater challenge in identifying and accessing providers who are highly skilled in guiding them through the process of functional assessment and habilitation.

Collaborative care, when provided by skilled IBCLCs and manual therapists/bodyworkers affords the breastfeeding dyad the most supportive approach to attaining functional feeding. For more than a decade, IBCLCs, and even release providers have come to recognize, if not even embrace the profound collaborative role the bodyworker plays, both in assessment and functional habilitation. The triad of care, IBCLC, bodyworker, and release provider, is a powerful and effective clinical model when it functions as intended. Yet, a significant gap exists between what this model can achieve and what families commonly experience. IBCLCs are now better trained to recognize effective bodywork and often become frustrated with the need…