My baby is five months old. BFing has been nothing but hard work, and now it's starting to affect my mental health. In the beginning it took about 11 weeks to be pain free due to poor latch, extreme nipple damage, thrush and mastitis. Then we had a good time of it for a while, but now I have a bleb that's stuck around for a month so far, another dose of mastitis (while also dealing with real flu) and now she's cut her first tooth and the latch has buggered up again leaving my nipples incredibly sore. I just feel like we're going backwards, and it's making me pretty miserable. The last thing I want is to go back to feeds being so painful I resent feeding her like I did in the early days.
So many people have told me that soreness from new teeth is transitory, and I want to believe that, but we've had so many issues that other people don't I feel like maybe this is never going to just work out.
I've stuck it out so far as we have allergies and asthma in the family and I know it's the only thing I can do to mitigate that risk
I'm going to do my best to stick it out for the next four weeks until we get to the point where we've done six months and she's getting solids too.
But is there really a proven benefit of carrying on after then? I know the WHO advice, but have any studies proven clear differences from this point on in developed countries?
I'm just not sure I can handle much more pain and anxiety. It can't be good for my little girl.