Baby (3 weeks old) smacking lips whilst BF and taking in a lot of air?

[BabyLabyrinth]

DD has started sort of smacking her lips and making funny air-guzzling noises when she feeds. I'm sure she didn't use to when I was in hospital and had people checking our latch every day. How can I fix this? I can't see anything wrong with the latch nipple and lots of surrounding areola are fully in mouth (although I do seem to get covered in milk, so maybe she dribbles it out from underneath where I can't see?) but it's definitely starting to hurt now. My nipples aren't cracked or particularly sore-looking after a feed, but I don't want them to get that way. As she's taking in so much air, I also have to burp her really well afterwards, but she still seems to have dreadful tummyache a little later/when she tries to poo. Any advice/tips would be very gratefully received!

Hopefully someone who knows a bit more about these things will be along here soon but I know some of the things you mention can be signs if a tongue tie. Was she checked for one?

No, she hasn't been, as far as I know. (We're in Germany -- don't even know what tongue tie is in German!) In case it helps, she never lost much weight after the birth, reached birth weight again on day four and has reliably been putting weight on since. My midwife checked her latch earlier when she came round and said everything was fine, but had no explanation for the pain I'm feeling ...

Strangely I studied German at uni. The frenulum under the tongue is ds's Zungenbändchen. Sorry that's still not really any practical help... I wonder if someone like tiktok might be able to help..?

ds's das

I was also going to mention tongue tie. Ds just had his snipped and I know the things you mentioned can be signs.

Oh and by the way I found out my ds has a tongue tie when he was about 15 weeks. He has always taken in a lot of air and I suffered a lot of pain to begin with, but because the pain eased and he also put weight on very well I thought nothing more of it at the time...I always just wondered why he was always so 'clicky' when feeding, making him very windy and generally just having such a shallow latch, so when the feeding coodinator said she could definitely feel a tongue tie, that explained all that.

That's really interesting, ag. I'll talk to the midwife again tomorrow, although I think she's a bit useless really. I've got a very good doctor though who I could ask about checking for tongue tie. Thanks, Tess, too!