Babies coordinate breathing and swallowing

During feeding, infants coordinate sucking, swallowing, and breathing. But the claim that a baby can “breathe and swallow at the same time until seven months” is inaccurate: a swallow is generally accompanied by a brief pause in airflow or a change in the breathing phase. Studies show that the timing between breathing and swallowing develops and stabilizes with maturation; they do not establish a universal seven-month cutoff.