05. July 2017

The ability of a baby to properly latch and feed is a complex suck-swallow-breathe sequence. This requires the function of 6 cranial nerves, 6 cervical nerves and a few thoracic nerves in order to coordinate as many as 31 muscles in the lips, cheeks, tongue, jaw, chin, soft palate etc. All of this soft tissue means that there can be involvement of many structures in problems of latch or abnormal suck. Let,s look at some of the muscles involved in moving the tongue. The three main muscles of the...