To think that breastfeeding mothers should be offered gas and air POSTNATALLY

[ReallyTired]

Many women find that breastfeeding is extremely painful at first. Even if they are given good support and a bad latch is corrected breastfeeding can be still painful. It can take days for the damage caused by a baby latching on badly to heal. The memories of cracked nipples bring tears to my eyes.

Rather than bullying do think that decent pain relief would help mothers establish breastfeeding? Ie. if a mother is scared of the pain of breastfeeding then the offer of gas and air might tempt her.

Maybe gas and air would not help, but good medical attention for cracked nipples might. I feel its almost misogyny to expect women to breastfeed without doing something about physical pain.

Oooh I remember that 5 I would latch dc2 on and just wince in anticipation. Ouch, ouch, ouch! Forceful letdown I think. Seriously un-nice.

I asked for gas and air when I was breast feeding and the MW all laughed, but I was deadly serious, I was in agony.

I remember ringing my friend and asking her if it was normal to feel like someone was sticking pins in your nipple when breastfeeding , surely this toecurling pain wasnt normal ? She said fraid so frumpet , stick with it and it will pass . She was right . But the pain was excrutiating , i had to bite down on something .

I was on pain killers as I had a cs and they masked the pain of my cracked nipples. They also masked a severe case of mastitis which lead to abscesses.
Sometimes you just have to feel the pain.

Also agree that Lasinoh is only helpful if there's hardly any problem in the first place.
I had lactation consultants congratulating me on such a perfect latch, and within a few days I had such cracked and painful nipples that I was crying just at the thought of the feed. I've never quite worked out if the lactation consultants just don't know what a good latch looks like or if I just have dud nipples.

Just had to de-lurk to ask if anyone has heard of silverettes (silver nipple covers that you only take off when feeding)? In my experience, they are miraculous. I had horrendous pain breastfeeding ds1 and was still getting cracks intermittently after 4 months.
Lansinoh was bloody useless, and I had latch checked numerous times. Eventually stopped asking for help as i felt like a bit of a freak and was relieved to stop breastfeeding after 6 months.
Had ds2 last summer and after 2 days both nipples were cracked and bleeding and I was in agony. I did a search on MN and found several threads about silverettes, ordered them and within 2 days of using them could feel a significant improvement, feeding was totally comfortable after about a week and I am still feeding almost 9 months later.
I agree that pain does not always indicate a problem, & some women just have very delicate nipples ( I also have very fair and sensitive skin so think there is probably a connection).
Anyway, if i ever do manage to have dc3 my silverettes will be the first thing to be packed in the labour bag and will be going on as soon as baby is out!

I think that ante natal breastfeeding classes are poor in my area. For example when I was pregnant with dd I was offered a class 5 miles away. The time of the class was 2.30 to 3.30pm and there was no creche. I couldn't go as I had to pick up ds from school at 3.10. Three years ago it was impossible for a second time mum to attend a class on breastfeeding.

A lot of women who did go to the nhs breastfeeding class were taught to feed their babies in the cradehold. The cradehold is great if you have an older baby, but newborns often struggle as their neck muscles are week. I think women would benefit from being shown other breastfeeding positions like the cross cradlehold or biological nuturing which many newborns find easier.

I think forums like mumsnet really help breastfeeding. I believe that if I had access to mumsnet, netmums or babycentre before ds was born (ie. 10 years ago) I would not have got into such a hideous mess with bf.

With DD it was painful enough for me to say ouch ouch ouch and have to count to 100.

With DS it was worse - I used to sit sobbing on him for the first couple of mins (fine after that tho).

Interestingly, now he is a huge 5 month old with much bigger mouth and tendency to yank around on the boob, it doesn't hurt at all !!

He does like to squeeze with his fingers while feeding tho - this is ok unless he scrapes his nails across my areola ... Aarghh!

\so if a woman is slightly out her tree on G n A how is she supposed to feed her baby , she wont be able to concentrate IMO , I loved G n A but made me every so slightly unhinged