The Incentive Spirometer

Cami using her incentive spirometer
The incentive spriometer

Cami has been going to a speech language pathologist for the last couple of months due to her excessive drooling. She was soaking through three to four bibs a day and we're pretty sure she's done teething. The speech teacher informed us that she has weak muscles in her mouth. We believe the weak muscles were caused by the large size of the nipple holes on the baby bottles in China. The babies don't learn how to suck properly with such large holes. We've been doing various stretching exercises with her mouth. Part of her treatment involves sucking on straws and blowing. Cami was given the device pictured above to help her blow. She blows into the tube, which causes the ping-pong type ball to rise. There is a gauge on the side of the spirometer to show how high the ball rises. Now we have to keep Collin and Evan from using the spirometer. They think it looks like a lot of fun.