Emanuela was born with a single ventricle heart, transposition of great arteries and stenosis of pulmonary arteries. Like almost every other baby with a congenital heart defect we have seen during seven months of her hospitalization, she was given a feeding tube down her nose at the very beginning. I

As advised and taught in the hospital, the first step was what they called orofacial stimulation. The idea behind it is massaging the child's face in a sequence of moves, just before the feed. It is supposed to trigger the primal instincts of opening the mouth, sucking and