Oxygen saturation during and after feeding in healthy term infants

In instrumented infants, 'normal' feeding occasionally causes respiratory changes, however, the extent of 'acceptable' oxygen desaturation is undocumented. We studied O2 saturation in healthy full-term neonates under totally natural feeding conditions unencumbered by any mechanical devices. Infants' O2 saturation was monitored continuously for 10 min of nutritive sucking and for 5 min after feeding. Twenty-one infants were studied, including 11 breast- and 10 bottle-fed infants. The distribution of saturation measurements was calculated and compared during feed vs. postfeed periods for both groups of infants. None of the infants had decreased saturation with feeding when compared to the prefeeding baseline. However, most of the infants in both groups did experience significantly lower O2 saturations after than during feeding (18 and 29% of the postfeed readings were < 90% in breast- and bottle-fed infants). Mean O2 saturations dropped from 96 +/- 2% (during feed) to 93 +/- 2% (postfeed) in breast-fed and from 95 +/- 2% (during feed) to 92 +/- 4% (postfeed) in bottle-fed infants. These findings elucidate the physiology of normal infant feeding and should be taken into account when monitoring term infants with oxygen saturation.