Breastfeeding with scars from previous attempt?

[ElusiveMoose]

Hi,

Just looking for a bit of advice/similar experiences.

My second baby is due in 3 weeks, and I'm concerned about feeding. I had a really torrid time during the five or six weeks I fed DS (now 2.10). Won't bore you with too much detail, but it was a combination of poor weight gain, SERIOUSLY distressed baby (screamed all day and night), lacerated and very painful nipples, and finally repeated infections which eventually made me concede defeat. I never got to the bottom of the problem, and I felt I tried pretty much everything to make it work (had good support from trained bf counsellors as well as MWs and HVs, but none of them could find a solution).

I'm determined to try again this time. Predictably I have various concerns about how it will turn out, but specifically I wanted to ask if anyone knows whether scars on the nipples affect chances of bfing successfully? After I stopped bfing last time, my nipples took about 3 months to fully heal, and I still have significant amounts of whitish scar tissue. Both breasts have a speckling of this tissue across the surface, then on one side there's a solid ring of it around the base (where I had a bad lateral crack), and on the other side I have a sizeable chunk of it on the side of the nipple tip, where I basically 'lost' about a quarter of the surface tissue last time round . I've no idea whether this tissue is likely to hurt more/less then the rest of the nipple, or whether it will have milk ducts etc - does anyone know??

Thanks in advance.

Gosh what a hard time you had last time Elusive Moose. I also had a very had time bf my first and was also badly lacerated and scarred on my nipples. I didn't suffer from any infections etc though which just sounds awful for you.

I can only offer you advice on my experience on my second baby and say that it was a totally different experience.

I was still very sore at the start but just lathered on the nipple cream (lansinoh worked very well for me) and carried on. It was hard but settled well after a few weeks. I would just say try to remain positive and just go for it. I can't answer your questions about milk ducts etc as I really don't know. I have managed to feed perfectly well despite scarring though.

I was lucky enough to have a brilliant BF counsellor through the www.breastfeedingnetwork.org.uk and she really helped me with latch and positioning. You probably know this but she said most problems with feeding are due to latch being wrong and that was certainly true for me. The network has local groups all over the country and a great phone helpline but it sounds like you probably know this from your post.

Good luck!

Hi there, and thanks for the advice, domesticdisaster. I had a quick look at that website and it looks really helpful, so I've bookmarked it in case I need it later. Really encouraging that your second experience was so much better, and that the scarring didn't seem to affect the feeding - thanks for cheering me up .

Hi, I also have the white scars you are talking about, but am now successfully feeding my second baby. I ended up being successful with the first one too but it took a while. In my opinion, the scars should not make any difference. But you will still be sore in the beginning so use the Lansinoh before feeds too!