Is this thrush?

[islandbaby]

DS is 3 weeks old. I am EBF, with an expressed bottle at night to give my nips a rest and avoid unpleasant scenes of stress and tears at night because OF THE PAIN.

BF has never been painfree but I had got it to be manageable up until four days ago.

Now, I have very red nipples always (areola still brown and normal looking), the pain continues all through the feed, not just at latching, as he slows down approaching the end of the feed and is sucking more thaan swallowing i often have to delatch him because of the sandpapering like pain, then after the feed my nipples sting intensely for almost 30 minutes, and will sting between feeds if I'm cold, or they rub my clothes.

One breast has a pain more in the breast as well as the nipple - but only during feeding.

I think bad latch is a problem too as my nipple is often wedge shaped after feeding, although tongue tie has been ruled out by ttwo midwives.

But does the enduring pain sound like thrush?

Having just glued myself to kellymom for the past couple of hours, I wanted to add that I have nipple blanching as well, where areas of my nipple are very white when they come out of the baby's mouth, but return to being red after a while.

Sounds like it's all a latch problem... right?

Geeee, this is all pretty difficult!

Can you get a breastfeeding counsellor to come and see you? Midwives often don't have much of a clue when it comes to breastfeeding, and my ds's tongue tie was missed by countless midwives despite being in hospital for 4 days.

If it has always been painful then you probably do need to sort the latch out - contact NCT or LLL maybe?

It's a latch problem I am almost certain of that without actually seeing it for myself.

The problem you have is it hurts because he doesn't latch properly but it'll hurt when he does latch well at the moment too because your poor nipples are damaged.

Is there a local la leche league near u?
Can you contact the hospital and ask for a visit from the community midwives or a midwifery support worker?

You need seeing and someone time spenting with u.

Have you any cream for your poor nipples?

I also think it is an attachment problem from the mention of the wedge shape.

Would you like to try biological nurturing as a way of getting your baby to self attach to see if this can help? When babies are allowed to self attach they can often achieve a better latch than when mothers lead attachment especially in the early days.

another link for baby led attachment

mother led attachment

but it may help for now. look at page 9 which is titled Attachment: Exaggerated Attachment.

good luck.

you are not far off perfecting it.

as with biological nurturing look for the earliest feeding cues and start then. you and your baby will be less likely to get stressed out therefore more likely to succeed.

Could be a combination. I've had the pain you talk of and had plenty of people telling me my latch is fine. Got this pain in one side now but got tablets for thrush. Could also be a blocked duct as that is really painful. Try massaging breast when feeding. Are there any lumps?

I'm a bit of a novice really so think you should defo seek help. La leche is also a fab place for answering questions.