Can I just use one boob to get the other one to heal?

[Quilty]

I'm after your breastfeeding knowledge again lovely MNers!

So I've had cracks in both nipples, the right side is now completely healed and we've got the latch right and its lovely feeding her from this side. BUT the crack on my left side just wont heal, it's quite deep I have tried different positions but it hasn't helped.

So I'm thinking I could try feeding her only from the good side for a while and this will give the other side a chance to heal. But is it ok to do this? Will she get enough milk if I only use one boob for a day or two? Do I need to keep expressing the damaged side to keep supply up? I've got a feeding cup I could hand express into although baby is very unlikely to feed from it as we've tried before and she was having none of it! Please help, I'm clueless!

I did this. I fed from one side then expressed using manual pump on the damaged side for about ten mins. It only took a full day for my nipple to be healed enough to try feeding again. In the end we didn't used the expressed milk as she wouldn't take a bottle! She'll get enough from just one boob.

My nipples took a long time to heal. nipple shields helped in the end. It would be worth trying to express and cup feed some feeds to see if it through

If you stop feeding on one side you risk the supply dropping dramatically. Even if you continue to express. It's a tough one to call. I have a scar on my nipple from a crack which appeared in the early days and was still there when DS was 6mo :( eventually I did resort to just using the good one for a few days to give the crack a chance to heal.

I used jelonet for a while too, but it didn't seem to do much good. Lansinoh also didn't help that much.

What age is your baby? How do you think the latch is on the left side now?

Redkites, she's only a month old. I think the latch is fine on both sides but painful on the left because of the crack.

Yes Jolly, I was worried about messing up the supply but if I just do it for a day maybe that wouldn't do any harm?

She's doing an awful lot of cluster feeding at the moment (all morning and all evening) so my nipples aren't getting much of a break!