caro as crafty has said, if people were honest about breastfeeding then perhaps more mothers wouldn't give up quite so soon feeling like failures.
Yes there can be problems with latching on, with thrush, etc. But are you told about ANY of these problems beforehand? No.
You are told, by midwives and breastfeeding counsellors that if you are doing it right, it should not hurt. This puts the emphasis onto you, the mother, which implies that if it does hurt, it's not thrush or anything else but the way you are feeding which is wrong. It makes you feel like a failure as a new mum.
I wrote an article about my experience for the NCT as I was so angry by the attitudes I had come across. I realise that most counsellors meant well but they all seemed to imply that the pain was largely my fault. Their attitude was that if the positioning and latch were fine, then there should be no pain. You wouldn't believe how many responses that article got from women who all had the same experiences and many of them, like me, had given up breastfeeing after feeling like utter failures.
If we knew the truth about breastfeeding then we wouldn't have put so much pressure on ourselves to get it right. If I knew about breast thrush and mastitis I would have got these checked out. I only found out about them by googling problems with breastfeeding.
I did get mastitis once but I did not get breast thrush thankfully.
With both of mine, the pain was there from the very start of the feed although it got more bearable towards the end and now I do feel that it was to do with the letdown of my milk. Once we had both settled into a routine, from around 6 weeks onwards, the let down became less severe and the pain would subside until, with ds, I was able to feed with ease after 3 months.
Knowing all the problems associated with breastfeeding would not have put me off trying and it may even have resulted in me feeding dd for longer instead of finally giving up after 3 months. I was angry that no-one had told me of all these issues so that I could have investigated them. I was angry that they implied the pain was all my fault and that I was not feeding my babies correctly, or that I was being soft and imagining it. The responses from my article showed me that I was not alone. There were many angry mothers out there who also experienced pain and who were also made to feel like failures.
I found many more on Mumsnet. In fact I had such an argument on here once (years ago) with a bf counsellor who didn't believe me that sometimes, it just bloody hurts, that I started a thread and she had to concede defeat when many posters came on to say the same thing, that their positioning was fine, the latch was fine, but it still JUST HURT. They too, were angry at how they had been treated.
So yes, do investigate breast thrush, do watch out for mastitis and do make sure you get cracked nipples treated (I also advocate rubbing breast milk on them, but AFTER your baby has fed so that your nipple is covered in the creamy breastmilk which makes more of a difference I think) but if you have investigated all these possible causes and are still in pain then it's just one of those things which is more common than you'd expect. I doubt it will be investigated as midwives and bf counsellors seem to have this huge problem in even admitting that painful breastfeeding exists. But it DOES subside and you CAN get through it. You need a lot of moral support and more importantly, you need to be believed.
Best of luck OP.