Michelle Bruny RN presented Thought Field Therapy to the Caring Advocacy Committee of Nurses at Redlands Community Hospital. I was so impressed with this therapy I wanted to use it while working in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

I was taking care of baby boy Johnson, a micro-premie baby born around 25 weeks gestational age in the NICU. At the time I was taking care of him he was about five weeks passed his due date and was having a hard time nipping his full feedings. I was worried about him because he started showing signs of nipple aversion.

Feeding aversions are sometimes found in babies born premature who are intubated for long periods of time. Baby boy Johnson was intubated for the first several weeks of life and was reintubated a few weeks later. This reintubation delayed normal feeding patterns and he had to wait a longer time to be able to take a bottle. For several weeks feeding progress was slow and required much patience from nursing staff and his parents. The infant would resist taking a nipple and would require gavage feedings because successful bottle feeding did not happen.

After learning about Thought field therapy, I asked Michelle if it could work on a little baby who showed evidence of a feeding aversion. She said definitely and encouraged me to use the trauma algorithm since having a plastic tube in the mouth might have caused the baby to avert to any kind of oral stimulation.

After talking to Michelle, I was able to take care of the baby for the next three days. At the beginning of each feeding I would go through the trauma algorithm and the baby’s face would relax after finishing the sequence. Before the sequence began the baby was very frustrated and appeared very agitated. He cried when the nipple was placed around his mouth.

I did this sequence while he took a few sucks and during this sequence his facial expressions began to relax. As the days went by he would eat more at each feeding and he would rest more time between feedings. At the end of the three days the baby was bottle feeding much better than he had three days prior.

I feel that Thought field therapy was a key component of this child successfully being able to bottle feed and ultimately being discharged home to his mother and father.
–anonymous RN