Painful nipples

[Cheeser]

Hello

DS was born at 30 weeks - for the first four weeks I was expressing (which was given via NG tube in SCBU) and breastfeeding an increasing number of feeds a day from 33 weeks. He came home at 35 weeks fully breastfed.

It's been going really well but over the last three or four days I developed a tiny white dot on my left nipple, which I think is a blister or an ulcer - I think from his gums. I've tried to improve the latch by encouraging him to open his mouth wider which works for the initial latch-on but he tends to pull slightly off after a little while and suck the nipple back in and it's agony. Now I've got the same little dot on the right nipple, similar place. And the whole of my left nipple looked white this morning. It's gone back to its normal pink now.

Both nipples hurt when not feeding, a sort of ache. I've been slathering on the lansinoh which isn't really doing much. DS decided to feed for a marathon two hours straight last night which didn't help, but after ten minutes or so each side the pain subsided.

Can anyone help? Is this par for the course? I can get to a breastfeeding clinic tomorrow but in the meantime I'm in pain. I took a couple of paracetamol last night but would rather not have to do this before every feed.

Any advice? Do I just have to grit my teeth/curl my toes and feed through it until I can get the latch looked at? I have a tonne of milk in the fridge but no bottles so can't give him EBM at the moment.

I had the white dot on both nipples. Showed midwives, gp, health visitor, no one knew what it was or why it was there. After lots of looking on different sites I came up with milk blisters. There are ways of getting rid of them, but only with help of professional. No professional I saw would have known how to help!

So I left them alone and carried on, with the odd bottle of formula, when it was really painful (just one every couple of days) and by 12 weeks they were gone. Sorry no advise, just my experience! Sounds like you're doing brilliant so far :)

Cheeser - it sounds like you have a milk blister or 'bleb' as they are sometimes called. They are fairly easy to deal with at home but depending on the cause of the bleb they could cause plugged ducts and/or mastitis if left so it's best to get them sorted asap.

Dealing with a Milk Blister/Bleb here

Dealing with plugged ducts here.

The nipple that went white, was it squashed or mis-shapen in any way (bullet shaped/lipstick shaped/wedge shaped) rather than just looking like a nipple? If your nipple is mis-shapen it may be that baby isn't latching on deeply which may contribute to the pain you are feeling. Deep latch technique is a good way to get more breast into baby's mouth so the squashing of your nipple doesn't happen.

HTH

Look up nipple vasoconstriction online. I've just been diagnosed - apparently it is pretty rare, and the bf counsellors at our local support groups hadn't seen it in action before, so was diagnosed by gp who'd had it too.

Wow thank you TruthSweet I think that's exactly what it is. The pic looks exactly the same, although mine is slightly smaller than on the pic. Going to have a read through of the great info on that site.

The nipple that went white was ever so slightly mis-shapen, like a lipstick, so down to his latch. Will have a read of your deep latch link.

Thank you Vikinglady, vasoconstriction sounds possible - just read briefly about it but unsure if it comes and goes?

Cheeser - vasoconstriction also called vasospasm - good lot of info on it here and there is a thread running at the mo about it too. Vasospasm can be caused by a shallow latch too so getting a deeper latch can help avoid that happening or minimise it - so it could appear to come and go if one feed is a shallow latch and the next is deeper latch IYSWIM.