BFing nuisances and bad manners on the boob - lighthearted thread

[PacificDogwood]

DS4 is now 6 months old.
For 6 months I have BF him (and will continue to do so) inspite of:

• him kicking and clawing me ALL the time when feeding
• him pulling his head back so far whilst pushing against my breast with his upper hand that he regularly pulls the nipple out, ouch!
• he pinches a bit of my bingo wing upper arm or muffin top waist with his lower hand really really hard
• he makes a very loud "hmmmmhmmmmmhmmmmm" noise, not 'yumyum' more a growl, which makes discreete BFing in public impossible due to decible levels
• he always cries when he comes off the breast; whether he comes off himself or I take him off for nibbling, whether he has fed 3 minutes or hours. Half a dozen sucks on his dummy and he'll spit it out and is happy
• he bites... well has done once. I think my reaction has warned him off big time
• he turns his head at every interesting noise (3 older brothers so lots of loud interesting noises) without letting go of me first; breast tissue is really amazingly stretchable

As he is No4 I am BFing I am quite staggered how many bad BFing habits he combines in his little person. The others all did some of the above, or had little phases of doing one of the other, but not all and all the time and from the start and for so long, gah!!

So, please add your BFing niggles and pratfalls and make me feel better about the love/hate relationship my son seems to have with my boobs !

We had intensely painful pinching here early on, but DD seems to have grown out of that. Now I just have to contend with teeth poking/pulling, hair pulling, nose poking, ear twiddling, breast smacking/kneading, mmmmm noises, feet resting on my collarbone, feet n my mouth, nipple nibbling, nipple twisting as she looks around, pulling back and trying to crawl away whilst still attached.

I don't know what it is about my left boob, when she is sleepy i can get her on there without her noticing but in the day time it is rudely rejected. It's making me lop-sided.

We found a new fun pastime today...Bra strap pinging.

My midwife told me bfeeding would be a relaxing bonding experience. Liar.

Ds will be feeding happily, and then requests "uvver one Mum" so I wriggle round and put my book in the other hand, only to hear "uvver one Mum" and I wriggle back again and 20 seconds later it's "uvver one Mum" and then I look down into the cheekiest grin. He thinks he is hillarious.

He also likes to wriggle to the point of standing on his head and feet like a tripod, bum in the air.

TOP TIP - for hitters, grabbers, gropers, pinchers and pokers, I have introduced a bfing chum; a soft toy that he holds when bfing. The toy takes the punishment and I get a break. Also useful when I sneak away after feeding to sleep and ds still has the toy to hold.

I also get the hand in the mouth at the moment and dd likes to pull at my teeth. It makes her giggle but it's quite uncomfortable! She also does the pinching a tiny bit of skin thing. It's like she can't keep her hands still for one second. It's obviously a waste of time just having a feed - the hands have to be learning about something else at the same time!

Has anyone ever tried one of those breastfeeding necklaces and do they work? Will have to try the soft toy idea, YunoYurbubson!

DD will unlatch herself to grin at me, and then latch back on again, which is lovely.

But she went through a less lovely phase of filing her fingernails on my collarbone... ouch.

hotsprocket - my 10 month old DD will only feed from the right until the middle of the night when she is half asleep. I do find feeding from the right comfier though and the left one only makes milk at night so I don't mind.

She is lovely though and tickles my side with her underneath arm and gives me such big eyes when feeding

HotSprocket, I think your DD and my DS were separeted at birth ! I am getting lopsided too. Interestingly DS3 preferred R boobie as well so I think that there is a genuine difference between the two: ?slower let-down or summat

greensnail, you win the prize for the Most Disgusting Bad Habit - is your NN indicative of what your babe leaves behind on you ?

Yuno, oh, love the idea of introducing a BFing buddy although I suppose my DS is still quite young for that.

Wow, what is it about left boob rejection? Mine is exactly the same, and yes my left one is now significantly smaller. And he shouts at it, or sometimes just stops sucking it but remains latched on, staring at me with his little beady eye pretending to continue till I swap him over. Grrrr.

The other lovely thing is the loud trumping as he relaxes into it. Actually pulls his leg up whilst lying across me. Nice.

My most humiliating moment was getting sprayed in the face with my own milk after DS twiddled with the other boob distractedly while feeding. He found that utterly hilarious.
Hmmm we've also had the biting - but criminal mastermind that he was he'd always grin cheekily as the idea occurred to him - so most times I could whip my poor boob to safety and practise my stern 'no' voice.
And oh yes I'd forgotten about the bra strap pinging and amateur dentistry too.
Despite the fact that he's rather perfecting the somewhat irritating scrabbling into my top to tell me he's hungry, he's doing his cutest feeding quirk right now though at 13 months. He's really into pointing and going 'dat' to find out words so when he feeds he points at my eyes, ears, nose, mouth etc over and over for me to name them all and then points back at the boob. And whenever I say 'boob' he breaks into the cheekiest, happiest wee smile. I don't think it'll be long before he'll be bellowing that word in busy supermarkets.

I like to think the left is the savory side and the right is the sweet side She just likes her pudding.

Really though my left side has a faster let-down but then slows right down, but the right is more consistant. Must be that. Or maybe because when i carry her I pretty much always do it to the right so it's how she is used to lying.

Or she is just a wee madam and wants to make me into a lop-sided hunchback.

Ah yes....hand in mouth, fingers up nose, suddenly pulling my top right up to show my jelly belly to the world, clapping his hands over his head, weird rhythmic waving rituals, hair tugging (usually quite gently, thankfully!). Now that he's older, he talks with his mouth full, the latest being a weird head contortion followed by a giggle and a muffled 'I bent your boobie!', to which I am required to reply, in mock horror, 'Boobs are not for bending!'He can keep this up for absolutely hours and finds it funnier and funnier every time. You can't beat splurty boobie giggles :o

I am considering fitting a wing mirror to my shoulder so that DS2, who is 18 months, can feed without coming on and off every 3 nano seconds because he wants to see what's happening.

I am almost 41 but have the chin of a 14 year old because his constant face stroking has given me hideous pimples.

DS has been pulling my hair since week 1. Lately, at 9-10 weeks he has taken to really wriggling hard and pulling and twisting and unlatching and relatching after the first 5 minutes or so and I have to clamp him to the breast and hold him down to keep him from squealing. I think I gave birth to a piglet.

Mind you, feeding is delightful now that my nipples are not so bloody sore.

Ladies, we made it into 'Discussions of the Day'

Had to share because I thought you would all appreciate it

Started my peer supporter course today, so left DS in a creche (on site) for the first time. When I went down to get him after the session had finished, the lovely lady handed him back to me. I couldn't help but notice some of the buttons on her top were undone. DS had obviously remembered open buttons = milk. She was very nice about it, and commented how clever he was, being able to undo buttons. But oh God, the embarrassment...

Thats very cute sirboobalot!

My DD cant understand why Daddies boobs dont contain milk, was very funny as I told her to wait until I fed her as I was doing something, she went sobbing to daddy and randomly thought she would try her luck with daddies boobs, the look on DH was priceless

actually though, I love his cute little instincts, when he shakes his head from side to side to tease my nipple out and when he flails his arm at my breast to make it let down, and when he cuddles my breast in both hands like a massive burger -- so sweet!

DD (15 months) likes to put her foot up to my mouth - fine when clean barefoot e.g. post-bath, not so great when there's a dirty great shoe on it.

When she was tiny, she sucked her thumb. I used to catch her trying to sneak a thumb into her mouth while feeding, which I thought was a tad cheeky!

When she got a bit older, she would thrust her thumb into my mouth while she fed.

DD now likes to grab my chin and forcibly turn my head towards her if I have the audacity to not gaze lovingly at her at any point.

, oh yes, DS4 has also given innocent bystanders/adoring grannies love bites, teehee!
SirBoob, as long as Colin will learn not to undo buttons without prior consent before he is 16...

Mine has started to "snack" throughout the day. So he'll come over, pull my top down and latch on for maybe, 5 seconds? Then crawl off, come back a minute later, pull my top down... I can cope with this at home but he does it when we're out now and it's getting embarassing!
He scratches, twiddles and squeezes my nipples, sometimes spraying me with milk in the process.
We;ve just gone through a month of biting but this seems to have stopped, fingers crossed.
Oh it's such a lovely experience!

Mine is ten months and bashes them. She is also very easily distracted - by her brother. She pinches the skin on my upper arm, so hard she left bruises last week. Also, I have still not lost baby weight and therefore have a belly button 'outie'. In the night recently, she pulled up my top and tried to suckle from that. When she realised it was no good she started headbutting, which she altered with blowing raspberries on me which made me giggle, which made her do it more. And the hand in the mouth thing. She only bit a couple of times thank god. Her brother bit often at around six months and the worst part of that was that he would affix me with a look just before he did it.

Oh, and I am not allowed to read while I feed anymore. She bashes books/papers out of my hands.

I am so glad your thread made it onto discussions of the day - I wouldn't have seen it otherwise. It made me cry with memories of my bf days! Of course I can only remember the good bits - like both my babies would smile at me while feeding, nipple against their tongues, milk slooshing about their gums and I just adored that!

The lovely thing is I can't remember any of the painful stuff now. I just wish it could have gone on longer, wish I could have become a wet nurse!!

a few f you have mentioned being kicked in the stomach, try that with a caesarean scar!! OUCH!!