Help my poor ol' baps

[Tippychick]

Help please. I have always BF exc, my DD is 22 months and have never had any bother. This week my nipples have been getting sore and today they're agony. I've just given her a bedtime feed and had to bite my lip throughout, really really painful. They are red, sore, cracked in one place and really painful. One even seemed to have a little discharge but as I checked I expressed so couldn't tell.

I have nothing in the house for this, am a single parent with no car and a sleeping baby - no chance of going to get anything to help. Does anyone have any home remedies I can use until I can get to a chemist tomorrow afternoon? Something likely to be in my house already?

My poor old boobs, do you think they're telling me enough is enough ?

[theSuburbanDryad]

Have you got any Kamillosan nappy cream? You'll have to wash it off before you feed next (although my ds got hold of the tube and ate half of it and he was fine! ) but it works like Lansinoh.

Also those boo-boo pads that you put in the fridge for kids (we have Mr Men ones - do you know what I mean?) will soothe well. Cabbage leaves are supposed to be soothing, but I think that's more for engorgement.

Has her latch changed recently? I know when ds got his back teeth through his latch changed totally and we had to almost learn how to nurse again - it was very painful at the time.

[Tippychick]

It might have done, she has loadsa teeth and new ones coming through all the time so maybe it has changed. Yowser

I gave away my Kamillosan as it didn't agree with her, curses. I have a cabbage but not a savoy. There's some coleslaw in the fridge tho

owwwwww, they're hurting just being there

[theSuburbanDryad]

Take your top off and let the air get to them? Cool flannel? Umm...Vaseline?

[ILoveDolly]

some sort of soothing barrier like vaseline, aqueous cream, anything. frozen peas? poor thing, I remember the pain all too well.

[theSuburbanDryad]

It just made sense - I knew he had new teeth and it was the only thing that could have changed his latch. We just started to nurse sitting up more. He now sits on my lap to nurse, rather than lying down in my lap IYSWIM. If he wants to lie down to nurse I support him on my knees rather than holding his head.

I'm not explaining this very well, sorry!

[Tippychick]

I thought of aqueous cream, I have an old jar of sudocrem somewhere too but not sure hygiene wise and frankly if it ends up stinging I will have to break some plates or something. Frozen peas would make them stand up (sorrytmi), would the value of the numbness be cancelled out by that pain? Oh, I feel like such a wuss and I thought I had a high pain threshold!

[theSuburbanDryad]

Cold will make your nips go numb!

[zazen]

Take a paracetamol, and make sure you don't have thrush? Use Bepanthan if you have it - or any lanolin cream.
good luck with it, and well done for getting this far - I nearly gave up every single day as DD had a bad latch - but kept at it until she self weaned at 9 months.

sounds like you have had some good advice here.

[fruitbowl]

Calendula cream if you have any? So sorry it's painful. Am wracking my brains and googling for you...

[fruitbowl]

Yes, I was going to say make sure at docs it's not thrush but that doesn't help you tonight. Squeezing a bit of milk out and letting the nips airdry is a good one as the milk has all sorts of amzing anti-fungal etc properties.

Just imagining you with your top off with all these creams, breastmilk and coleslaw on your nips - hope you have the curtains closed!

Well done for feeding all this time and hope you get through this. Your boobs may not have decided it's time to stop BFing but if you do then that's OK!

[Tippychick]

Ohh, I think I have some bepanthen, never used. May try that.

The coleslaw hasn't made it to the front line fruitbowl, don't worry. I don't think it can be thrush, it's painful in a more acute kind of way of that makes sense. I think dryad is right and it's the latch, it's been working up to this all last week.