Ouch!

[Romily]

We have been breastfeeding for a week and my baby is latching on beautifully however the first few minutes of feeding are excruciatingly painful.

There is no nipple damage on the outside and I have been using Lansinoh. His latch has been checked by numerous midwives and breast feeding advisors and I have been told that for some women the first few weeks can be painful.

How long have others had to persevere until it became pain free? I really want to persist with feeding him.

I did. It was awful. I used to have to psych myself up to get over that first few seconds of agony and dreaded it. The good news is that it doesn't last forever and after that it's as easy as breathing. Totally worth persevering with though. Good luck!

Do you remember how long it lasted for, was it weeks or months?

I still get that pain at the start sometimes and DS is 13 weeks! But it isn't as bad as it was though we do still have some bfing issues. However I understand we're pretty rare to be having issues at this point as I was always asking when it would get easier and most people seemed to stop having issues between 6-12 weeks at the latest. Hang on in there!
In the mean time, one of the things that helped us was using exaggerated latch (I think it's also known as 'flipple').

It lasted 2 weeks for me, but then I tried holding ds like a rugby ball and it disappeared immediately!

I have tried a few different positions including the rugby ball one and it is the same in whatever position I try. The only thing that has helped has been painkillers which is clearly not a long term solution.

On tues I am going to a LLL meeting to double check that his latch is ok but I do think it may just be a case of waiting and seeing.

Hi OP, just wanted to say well done for continuing, when it's painful. It really is worth it. Dd is 20 months now and honestly for me it was painful to feed for the first 8 weeks I would say. I remember dreading feeding her and sometimes having tears in my eyes, gritting my teeth just to get through it. In my case I think my nipples needed to toughen up () and then there is nothing to it.