DD2 is 6 days old. Her first night home (24 hours later) she had a mammoth feeding session for 4 hours and managed to completely mangle my nipples to the point where I literally couldn't bear to feed her from the breast. The lactation specialist I saw day 2 tried to latch her but as the pain was so bad, told me to hand express and rest my nipples for at least 24 hours - we had already been topping up with formula to try to allow more time to recover between feeds.
Day 4, back to breastfeeding cafe, nipples much better with rest and gel pads, milk has come in. Latching directly onto nipple reopened wounds within 4 sucks but nipple shield worked great, so planned to continue with that. They think she has a lip tie and possibly a posterior tongue tie, though I am not keen to get them cut if she can feed with a nipple shield.
All was going brilliantly until last night when DD2 cluster fed (I assume!) from 7pm to gone 3am. Towards the end, I am sure it was more for comfort but literally NOTHING else would settle her. I broke at around 2am and gave her a tiny bit of formula to try and get a break but it didn't help. My nipples are a bit bruised again, though nowhere near as bad as earlier this week. Is this normal cluster feeding? Can it really go on so long??? And how do I best cope with it? I have a DD1 who is 3 and just cannot be stuck under a feeding baby day and night.
Sorry, long post, but I thought the more detail, the better!
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Infant feeding
Is this normal, and if so, how do I cope with it?!
SerenityReynolds · 11/12/2015 08:24
They said the tongue tie was really thick, although we haven't noticed much difference yet with feeding times since it was cut 
and she still won't latch onto me without the nipple shield. The last 2 nights have been dreadful with her not settling to sleep until 3.30-4am! She just wants to be on the boob. We did try a dummy earlier today which seemed to help her to drop off, so I think some of it is comfort sucking. We're also coming up to a growth spurt so that might be why she is feeding alot too?
I think I just need to try to keep going as best I can until DH goes back to work properly in January (he's got some days off around Christmas) and see how feasible things in terms of length/frequency of feeds are when I'm on my own with both the DC.
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