Aspiration pneumonia

Hi.  I am fostering two orphaned kittens and I have been for about two weeks now (that's how old they are).  They are bottle fed with KMR and have always seemed to do really well on it.  Yesterday I heard them coughing a little bit and I was worried.  I took them to a vet a few days ago and he said they were fine.  Today when I fed them they were coughing after they were done eating.  It had never happened before but I noticed while the one was coughing after he ate a little bit of milk came out his nose.  The breathing seems a little raspy.  I'm extremely worried because this seems like the symptoms of aspiration pneumonia to me and I have heard that most don't come back from that.  They have been on amoxi drop a couple days now but I don't think it's helping.  I'm so upset.  Is there anything else I can do?

[Ghilly]

Ask your vet to show you how to tube feed them.  It is EXTREMELY easy to do, and it's impossible for them to aspirate their formula when you tube feed them because you are putting the food directly into their stomachs.

Briefly, you take a feeding tube (that the vet can supply you with) and you hold it along the outside of the kitten, placing the end of the tube just behind the last rib (like right in front of where the kitten's flank would be).  Then, take a black marker and make a line on the tube right where the kitten's mouth is.  Now, open the mouth and thread the tube right smack down the middle of the throat.  The kitten's suck reflex automatically helps the tube make its way down the esophagus and into the stomach.  When the black mark you put on the tube is at the opening of the kitten's mouth, the tube is in place.  If it's far enough in so that the black mark is even with the opening of the kitten's mouth, the other end of the tube can't be anywhere BUT in the stomach.  

Next, you take a syringe and pull up however many cc's of formula you want to feed the kitten.  When the syringe is full, attach the end of it to the end of the feeding tube that's sticking out of the kitten's mouth and gently push the plunger until all of the formula is gone from the syringe.  Then, gently pull the feeding tube out of the kitten.  You're done.

This is SO much safer than bottle feeding, because the holes in those dumb little bottle nipples are never large enough, and by the time you make them large enough for the kitten to be able to draw formula through them, they're usually too big and let in too much liquid, and that's when the kittens (or puppies, it happens a lot with them, too) aspirate the formula into their lungs.

Just ask the vet to take a few moments to show you how this is done, and when you see how EASY it is, and how much SAFER it is than a bottle, you'll never use a bottle again.  Another good thing about it is that you can guarantee that each kitten gets exactly the amount they need, because you're not relying on them to nurse, you're deliberately putting the formula into the stomach.  They grow much more reliably because you can better control the amount of formula they get.  

Ghilly