BFing- struggling with sore, cracked nipples

[hmyh23]

Not really an AIBU but I'm desperate for some advice.

Day 8 of BFing here and really suffering with sore, dry, scabby nipples. I am following all the advice I've been given- using Lansinoh, dabbing with breastmilk, air drying where possible but they don't seem to be healing up and are constantly stinging and tingling. The initial let down when the baby latches is very painful and then the rest of the feed is better but still uncomfortable which means I dread every feed. The hospital midwives and community midwives have checked the latch and agree it's good, the baby is maintaining weight and is thriving so no problem with the amount she is getting. They seem to think the damage is from the first couple of days when the latch wasn't good but I dont know how to heal it when there's only 3hrs between each feed. I don't know whether to stop and express for a few days to see if this will help but I'm worried about getting her back on the breast afterwards. I don't want to throw the towel in now after trying so hard to get to this stage but I don't think I can just keep feeding through the pain and I am also recovering from a tear so quite uncomfortable In general. In all honesty I'm wishing I had just bottle fed from the outset as I feel this is adding an extra level of stress on top of recovery from labour and getting used to everything. NCT advice is that the latch mustn't be right or it wouldn't hurt any more and I should try and get an appointment at the local midwife unit for more help.

Any advice welcome from people who have been through similar, they are sticking to breast pads/bra/tops which is taking the top off the scabs and making it all worse.

Oh I feel for you, OP.

I've come on to say that not everyone is as tough as those on this thread.

I fed DD1 for 8 months. Each feed with nipple shields. It took bloody ages, 8 feeds a day of between 1 hour and 1 1/2 hours. I used shields because she was very small and I have massive nipples and she couldn't latch well (she didn't latch at all for the first 3 weeks so was cup and bottle fed without confusion). I tried occasionally to come off the shields but it hurt too much. I was really pleased I bf'd her.

DD2 though.... Healthy weight, normal size mouth. But the pain. The scabs. Every single feed. I tried shields but she just sucked my nipples out of the holes that the milk is supposed to come out of so I had 4 little scabs in each nipple to add to the others. I gave up on Day 5 and drove to the supermarket for formula. That hour they were resting in those plastic cover things (which filled up so they were soaking in milk) healed them. So I started again. And quit again this time on day 10. It hurt so badly, and then I got mastitis infected through one of the sores. I was dreading going anywhere near DD2. So I quit, she was formula fed from them on.

And she is fine now, 3 years later.

I am still traumatised though. Reading your posts have made my toes curl and my heart thump. When an aunt said, with a head tilt, when she heard I'd given up bf'ing "oh yes, it does hurt doesn't it?" I nearly smacked her. Unless you've had a painful bf experience, you can't begin to imagine the pain. And then the distress and guilt you feel when you don't want to go anywhere near your own baby.

@CheshireSplat You've totally hit the nail on head about tbe guilt of basically feeling like you're avoiding your newborn.

Lashings of lanolin— and then after feeding cover your nipple in some breast milk and walk around topless for a bit. I seem to remember that was the best thing. You’re nearly there. I suffered terribly for weeks and then it became lovely. Good luck.

I feel for you op!

I haven't RTWT but my experience is that breastfeeding does hurt to start with, even with the support of a breastfeeding expert and anyone who says it doesn't has either never done it, or is lucky. 😉

Both DCs had TT which was released but the most success I've had bfing was with DC2 and we've been going for nearly 7 months now. Like you I wasn't sure I'd get through the first few weeks!

Loads of good advice on this thread I'm sure... Speak to your GP and a lactation consultant or breastfeeding support for practical advice... I found things got better when DCs tt was snipped and then when her mouth got bigger.

I bf all day and night feeds and give a couple of top ups of formula in the evening and I've found combi feeding really works for us.

Just remember that however you decide to feed your baby you are doing a brilliant job. Lots of love and cuddles make more of a positive difference to a baby than any type of feeding and I'm sure you've got plenty of those.

"I recommend keeping the lanisoh on all the time and not letting it dry out." - it helped me
Milk Collection Shells | Breast shells - recommend!!!!

I second the hydragel pads! Or any other dressings for helping burns heal. They will cover the injured nipples and help them heal wothout scabbing over.

I was in terrible pain for two weeks, then in leas pain for another two weeks, and since then it's been perfectly fine. That month was absolutely horrible. Lansinoh was not helping, but hydragel pads did. After that month it's been perfectly fine, I'm still feeding a toddler now, and I'm so glad I found the strength to make it through that month.

I think it's better, if you can, not to top up with formula, but to push through it. Stopping and then starting again might end up more painful for you in the long run. Hang in there mamma

My daughter had a tongue tie and a high palate, and my nipples are quite small. I pushed through 7 weeks of pain, to the point where I was dreading her waking up as she'd want to feed, and couldn't bear clothes brushing against my nipples.

Midwives all told me the latch was fine, lactation consultant finally picked up the tongue tie, high palate and very shallow latch at 7 weeks. Snipped a week later.

A combination of the snip, and techniques for a deeper latch (flipple technique) helped, and things slowly improved over the next few weeks. Weight gain increased sharply too.

I think her jaw growing helped, and my nipples definitely got much more elastic over time - they can now stretch a long way and presumably reach the soft palate better! Still feeding now at 17 months.

I went through the same, it didn’t get solved in a month. I decided to give one side a break when DS started vomiting my blood. Although I expressed during the 2 days break, the production went down very quickly and another month of combined breastfeeding and expressing couldn't bring the production up. I gave up after a month as the production was so low it used to take DS more than an hour to feed and he was hungry again within an hour. I found it very sad, I really felt I had failed my son. (I know nowadays I had’t but it felt like that for a long time).

I got a lot of advice from my very good midwife, the health visitor, the nurses at the maternity ward and even the GP but it was not the advice I needed. If I had to go through it again, I would contact a breastfeeding advisor, a proper one, as soon as the problem started.

I second Jelonet dressing. I still remember the MW who told me about it very fondly. 😂

Have nasty cracking going on at the moment with #3 who is 4 months old, I feel your pain (quite literally) and send you

I haven't read all the posts but I had bad cracked nipples for over 4 weeks (including requiring a dose of Antibiotics and possibly having thrush) with my first.
I really didn't want to give up but was getting to the end of my tether when, finally, at a breast feeding clinic and one of the midwives there suggested feeding off one breast and expressing off the other for a few days (feeding DS the expressed milk from bottle every other feed) and then swapping over to the other breast.
In just over a week my nipples had healed and I could continue breastfeeding as normal.

I'm not saying that this would work for everyone but it did for me.
Good luck.

I wish I had seen this thread sooner. My DS is 4mo now and I can relate to everything you are going through. You are not alone and you are doing a wonderful job as a mum.

I may not have the most experience or the best advice but here are my thoughts:

1. What the midwives/NCT say about it shouldn't hurt is bollocks! Unless you are lucky enough to have a high pain threshold it is going to hurt in the early days. Every time I heard or read someone saying that it shouldn't hurt it made me feel like a complete failure. And then I would speak to all my NCT friends and other real life mums and everyone told me that it hurts.

1. I went through treatment for thrush as I was getting shooting pains right through my breasts. At my GP there was no diagnostic test for thrush, they just asked what my symptoms were (it was all on my side, nothing with DS) and assumed it must be thrush and gave me an ointment called Daktarin that you apply to the nipple before a feed. If you end up on the same path a word of warning. The leaflet for the Daktarin says in big bold writing that it should not be given to babies less than 4 months old due to choking risk. I freaked out when I saw that and phoned the GP to be told they were aware if what the leaflet says but routinely prescribe it for younger infants as there is no alternative!

1. If you can make it to week 6-8, it does get better. It hurts less and less. If you don't make it that far and switch to bottles there's no shame in that either. You are still feeding your baby that is all that matters.

1. For the cracked nipples I would recommend Multi Mam compresses (you can get from Boots/Tesco/Amazon). The lansinoh and rubbing in breast milk did bugger all for me but the compresses were amazing if expensive (tip if you do get some, chop them in half so they last longer).

1. On day 3 I had a meltdown when DS fed for 5 hours solid in the wee small hours. No-one had told me this was perfectly normal and I was in agony. DH did an emergency trip to the 24 hour tesco for pre-made formula and that got DS to sleep. I felt a little guilty about using the formula but he has had no problem breastfeeding since.

1. Make good use of all the breastfeeding clinics/LLL if you can. You may not want to follow all their advice but they might have something that helps.

1. We are now at 4 months and things are going so much better. I still dread him getting teeth and having a whole new pain potential to deal with! But we are both enjoying feeding a lot more. DS is now at the stage where he gets distracted and starts looking up at me and giggling half way through his feed but I just take that by way of apology for the first 2 months!

Good luck with everything! You are doing a fantastic job

I've said this many times before, but I do think that there should be better advice on breastfeeding.

And by better, I mean honest.

Even by child number 3, I still didn't know what I was doing. Each baby is different.

I wish that the advice was, that it can and does hurt. Sometimes this is normal, and sometimes this is a sign things are not well. Signs for both would be useful.

For example, if your baby is getting enough wet and dirty nappies, but BF hurts, they must be getting enough.

But if baby isn't seeing enough/dirty nappies enough, maybe the hurt is down to latch or tongue tie.

More information about the bad side to breastfeeding - because there are bad sides.

It's almost as if we paint the pretty lovely demure picture of mum feeding baby and gazing lovingly at each other is what BF should be, in order to encourage BF - but the reality of someone sucking on you 24/7, means you have very sore and painful nipples! The reality sucks (if you pardon the pun), and this is why I think women feel so terrible when they look at the lovely pictures on the BF leaflets etc.

The other thing that is a very hard thing to deal with is thinking you have no milk. Firstly the colostrum is so concentrated - they don't need that much. Milk doesn't come in for a few days - and that is so hard! I didn't know this with my first (and even with my third I was like, why does he want to feed ALL the time!!)

The other major issue is the cluster feeding. This is the killer. For me anyway. Some days they just don't stop feeding. One side, to the other, and back again. There are times when you just feel like you want to be alone!

These are all such normal feelings. But I think if we present this image of breastfeeding, we'll put new mums off.

But honesty, surely is better?! I mean, no one says that labour is a piece of piss do they? We know it's agony, we don't dress that up, and yet women still want to have babies, despite knowing how they come out

So, a little more honesty. A little less guilt.

But, yes, the first 8 weeks are shit. For me in any case. Then they did get better. A lot better.

Still battled with mastitis, and teeth is fun not at all fun but we got there in the end.

Good luck to everyone x

gluteus

Hear hear. We do no one any favours by sugar coating.

@gluteustothemaximus

Agree!

Good luck OP

OP, forgive yourself for the guilt. You are not alone. I remember praying DD needed a new nappy and not feeding when she would cry in the early days. When it was time for a feed I would sob through it. Get some sleep love

Thank you everyone! We are plodding on for another day, hasn't been too painful for the last 24hrs and have had a couple of formula feeds to give myself a break. At the minute the baby feeds every 3hrs through the day and every 3-4hrs at night. Feeds are closer together in the evening between about 7pm and 1am. Each feed lasts about 15-25mins. Does this sound normal? I feel like the Nct lady was suggesting it wasn't enough but the baby is gaining weight absolutely fine. She is 17 days old. People keep mentioning cluster feeding and the baby being attached 24/7 which I'm absolutely dreading.

My approach now is just to take it one feed at a time and stop setting targets. I would like to continue but I'm not going to get obsessed to the point where it affects my mental health and makes me resent her.

By the way I mean she's attached and sucking for 15-25mins, then she needs to be burped etc after that.

Every baby is different - if yours is doing that consistently and you are getting plenty of nappies and weigjt gain then perfect. Take NCT advisors with a pinch of salt, they don't know your baby. One told me my baby couldn't possibly be feeding for an hour but she was!

Cluster feeding will hopefully hold off until you're more comfortable and if it doesn't there's no shame in upping the combination feeding. Tbh I don't know why more women aren't encouraged to combi feed if they are struggling but want to continue with bf. Honestly it saved me on the early days. I would go to bed immediately after a feed, DH would do the next one and I could get like 5 hours sleep!

Thanks @Bobbiepin yes nappies etc are all fine. I agree re combi feeding, I think it's the all or nothing mentality that puts people off.

I've not RTFT so apologies if it has been said but I introduced a bottle to my DC1 at 1 week old as I had unbelievably painful nipples and the tiredness was horrific (I also fed ff in the first few weeks too) - my nipples recovered and I got used to my tiredness and I BF DC until they were 2.5.

it’s the all or nothing mentality that puts people off

I agree. Bf rates are low in this country and I wonder how this might be improved if more women who were thinking of quitting altogether were encouraged to mix feed. There’s nothing to say you will have to mix feed forever either. If things improve then you could cut out the formula if you wanted to or exchange it for expressed milk.

Fwiw I have had very dodgy latch with both my dc, where they can’t seem to get enough milk - breasts still quite full after long feeds and babies never satisfied. Dc1 lost loads of weight early on and became ill and dehydrated, so we had to introduce formula in hospital. We ended up mix feeding dc1 and we are now almost exclusively expressing with 1mo dc2, (mainly expressed milk with the odd breastfeed and formula feed / top up if we need it). It wasn’t what I’d planned at all, as I’d wanted to EBF both children, but this has worked for us and was preferable for me than switching to ff completely. The bonus is that Dh can do some feeds too, which he enjoys and it also helps me get some more rest or lets me have some time with dc1, (while not tied up to s breast pump).

Just wanted to say this happened with all my 4 dcs and the last one skin split around 70% nipple in a circle. It wasn’t the latch, it always healed and I was glad I persevered. Around day 8 was always the worst point as I was tired, stitches sore “knitting together” and nipples not started to heal.
My advice for me would be just to keep going as it was worth it in the end. Take painkillers. Take any help. Only short visitors unless they are helpful. Air dry nipples. Don’t let nipple get stuck to pad. Careful to be fully awake during night feeds so latch doesn’t slip/ not be as good. Only think about getting through the next hour, next feed, next 5 mins. Don’t worry about getting through the next 24 hours (I’d have stopped as just couldn’t imagine coping with that pain), just take it in very small steps. Eat food you like/ wear your comfortable clothes, watch your favourite TV, listen to happy music.

*short visits from visitors, don’t ban tall people!