30 months breastfeeding - and NOW it hurts??????

[TheEponymousGrub]

Hello, I'm hoping for advice from somebody wise.

My dd is 2.5y old now, so we only bf in evening & morning. I really like it and I assumed we'd continue until she was ready to stop. But about a month ago it started to hurt on one side.

At first I guessed she was being a bit lazy, latching on badly (although she's really a pro by this stage) so I encouraged her to open up wider for a better latch. She tries hard ("I take a biiiiig mouthful, Mama!") and that helps a bit, but still the problem is getting worse, generally.

Both nipples are quite sore and the left side is really bad. Sometimes there's a white "seam" from compression when she lets go.

What's going wrong? I can't think of anything that's changed. Maybe she is just too old to bf - is that possible? She definitely doesn't want to quit just yet...but she will have to, if I can't fix this.

Has anyone else found that this is how natural-term breastfeeding ends?

I got to a point where I was feeding less and less on on one side and when I tried again it was like those early days nipples before they get used. After that I just fed from the one side until the end.

The only way I can think of to fix it is to feed more until they toughen up again.. or sack . off the side that hurts the most.

This is exactly what happened with my DS just before he turned 3, my gut feeling was that he was physically losing his ability to latch as his jaw grew before he was emotionally ready to self wean. I soldiered on for another 6 months but it did get really bloody painful, he'd take a big mouthful but still leave a ring of teeth marks every time. In the end I gave him a little nudge to wean at 3.6 and it was remarkably easy, even though he saw me continuing to feed his baby sister.

more snow please Only if my implant has failed . I wondered about it, but really: no.

agaze Yes it's very like that. Have you ever heard before of this idea of a child being physically too old but emotionally unready to quit?

No I haven't actually, it makes sense to me though . I'll have a flick through my copy of Breastfeeding Older Children later and see if she says anything about it. Once he got past 2 and was still going I was very keen to let it run it's natural course so I was quite sad to have to encourage the end, though I do think he was ready.

I fed through pregnancy and the pain of that was very different to what you describe, caused by oversensitivity rather than bad latch...it was one of my first symptoms though (literally within about 3 weeks of conception). Might be worth a test just in case!

Molars? I didn't feed past two but dd1 was still getting her molars at the same age as your dd, I remember the change in latch for each new tooth.