The Cozy Café

Are you a parent or caregiver of a child less than one year old? If so, please join us at The Cozy Café! The Cozy Café is a free informal support group for parents and caregivers of newborns and infants up to one year old. Staffed by certified lactation counselors, a registered dietitian, occupational therapists and speech therapists, we will offer lactation support, breast pump rentals, and basic infant care information. This is a great opportunity for you to ask questions, share your experiences, and socialize with other caregivers. From feeding concerns to sleep issues to behavioral problems, if we don't know the answer, we'll direct you to someone in the community who can help you and your child thrive. Thursdays, 11:00am - 12:00pm in the children's section at the Bozeman Public Library.

Breastfeeding Support and Supplies

Breastfeeding is the best way to meet a baby's needs. Breastfeeding is natural, but is not without challenges.

The Occupational Therapists and Certified Lactation Consultants at The Cozy Nest are trained to assist with these challenges by enhancing the breast-feeding skill of both mother and baby. Breastfeeding provides the best nutrition available.

Breastfeeding Benefits

• Breast milk is free!
• Nurtures emotional attachment with baby
• Optimizes immune system of baby, reducing doctor visits
• Proven health benefits for mom include lower risk of reproductive cancers, osteoporosis, diabetes, and postpartum depression
• Breast milk changes to meet the needs of a developing baby

Breastfeeding Services

• Breastfeeding preparation classes
• Home/clinic visits immediately after birth
• Postpartum support groups
• Assess and/or correct latch and positioning
• Follow baby's weight gain
• Nipple issues, engorgement, and mastitis
• Increasing milk supply and re-lactation
• Feeding, eating, and swallowing issues: Aversion, allergies, constipation, failure to thrive, oral-motor skills, reflux, tube-feeding
• Supplemental feeding support for adopted babies, special needs, and multiple births
• Facilitate successful transitions: back to work/school, bottle feeding, weaning, introduction of solid foods
• Breast pump rental, sales, and supplies
• Authorized Medela retailer

Aquatics

The Cozy Nest is pleased to offer aquatic therapy sessions for clients receiving occupational therapy or physical therapy services. The aquatic setting can have a profound impact on goal attainment due to the therapeutic properties of water as well as increased client motivation due to the novelty of the environment. Good candidates for aquatic therapy include children with:

• Attentional difficulties
• Sensory differences
• Fatigue with exertion
• Obesity
• Poor static and dynamic balance
• Difficulty with coordination of limbs
• Limited mobility
• Muscular weakness

The following properties of water contribute to the therapeutic value of aquatic therapy:

• Buoyancy allows for allows for decreased weight bearing and can alleviate the fear of falling.
• Therapeutic warmth helps decrease spasticity allowing children greater strengthening opportunities.
• Viscosity allows for slowed movement. This increases muscle memory and provides children with more time to react to balance challenges, making them less afraid to challenge their balance. The viscosity of water also offers the opportunity to perform functional activities decreased assistance.
• Surface tension offers resistance, which helps to Increase strength. It also helps improve body awareness.
• Hydrostatic pressure compresses skin, muscles and joints, acting as a compression bandage and providing pain relief. This pressure also increases demand on respiratory muscles to improve circulation and promote healing. Additionally, hydrostatic pressure increases proprioceptive awareness (joint positional awareness).

Hippotherapy

Hippotherapy is the use of horseback riding as a rehabilitative treatment modality. The Cozy Nest offers this fun, unique and impactful service to our clients each summer. Hippotherapy utilizes equine movement as a part of an integrated intervention program to achieve functional outcomes, such as helping children sit, stand, walk, balance and move with greater independence. The horse's walk provides sensory input through movement, which is variable, rhythmic, and repetitive. The resultant movement responses in the patient are similar to human movement patterns of the pelvis while walking. The variability of the horse's gait enables the therapist to grade the degree of sensory input to the patient, and then utilize this movement in combination with other treatment strategies to achieved desired results. Children who may benefit from hippotherapy include children with:

• Neuromuscular or other medical conditions
• Abnormal muscle tone
• Poor balance reactions
• Impaired coordination
• Communication difficulties
• Sensorimotor impairment
• Postural asymmetry
• Poor postural control
• Decreased mobility
• Difficulty with arousal and attentional skills

Hippotherapy is cash basis only. Insurance does not cover this service.

Social Groups

The Cozy Nest understands the value of learning alongside peers. Working in a group setting is a fun way to foster social and emotional development and provides a chance to learn targeted functional skills through collaboration and mirroring. Social groups at the Cozy Nest are tailored specifically to the group members' individual needs and may involve one or more therapy disciplines (occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, or nutrition therapy). Groups may be held on site at The Cozy Nest or may take place in the community. Depending on the targeted goals, groups may meet one time only or for a series of weeks. Social groups can be designed to target any number of skills, including:

• Verbal and nonverbal communication skills
• Cooperation and turn taking
• Empathy and perspective taking
• Understanding social contexts and customs
• Awareness of proxemics (personal space)
• Self-regulation and coping skills
• Emotional regulation and recognizing emotions in self and others
• Confidence and self-esteem
• Self-advocacy and assertiveness
• Conflict resolution and problem solving
• Healthy habits and routines
• Self-care skills
• Cooking skills
• Money management
• Community participation (shopping, public transportation)
• Executive functioning
• Stress management and coping skills
• Pre-vocational skills
• Leisure exploration

General Pediatric Screenings

Pediatric screenings description coming soon. In the meantime, please call for more information.