Breast pain at start of feed and after feeding

[Spink]

Hello - any ideas what this might be? ds is 3 weeks old, and bf started off ok, but for the last week and a half, latching on is eye wateringly painful, then once the feed starts it usually gets better. After feeding, I get pain in my breasts (not just the nipples), a kind of shooting burning pain. That can last for a couple of hours. Also my nipples are really tender all the time, even drying them after a bath is painful.

Clare,also what you express bears no relation to what trhe baby gets by sucking.

Another common myth is that if a baby is sucking a lot they are getting nothing.On the contrary,the action of the baby sucking produces milk so we have to learn to relax,trust our bodies and appreciate the symbiotic relatinoship between the baby and the breast.

It sounds like you had really crap advice.

Oh hello Was
Am her for a bit.What can i do for you?

hiya. an update... things have taken a bit of a turn for the worse. It got so painful to breastfeed that I decided to give myself a rest and chance to heal, and only expressed for a couple of days, no direct boob action for my boy. in that time, we got in touch with all the sources of support we could - hv, a couple of mws, bfc, nct bfc and GP. First of all with the thrush. still have no treatment as the people we've seen are pretty much half/half divided on whether it is thrush or not. I am going to my GP again today - a couple of people have advised that it is better to treat when there is no thrush than not treat when it IS there. and because it can be hard to diagnose.
Both the bfc's thought that the way we are breastfeeding is nearly there, but he is just not getting enough breast in his mouth and so is chomping down on the nip. But neither could really help us with how to change this - apparently I am doing all the right things, but he is not opening his mouth wide enough? So I don't really know what to do. One of the midwives suggested cranial osteopathy cos we had such a long labour, and in the end he was delivered by ventouse, which apparently can cause feeding probs. Seeing someone today about that and hoping that it will make a difference because I really don't know what else to try.
Argh.

I really feel for you if it is thrush. I can only echo what everyone else is saying really. My GP wouldn't prescribe fluco..., would only give me creams which were useless so eventually I just went down the citrocidal (grapefruitseed extract) tablets/no sugar/ probiotic route and slowly it did work. I've been ebf for 6 months now and if I get a twinge I just go back to that regime. (you can get citrocidal tablets etc from health food shops or just google it I think mine are from Higher Nature) As for the latch, for the first 3 or 4 months my dd never opened her mouth wide enough (she was tiny when she was born) but she seemed to get enough milk - I think she just 'pulled' more breast tissue into her mouth (IYSWIM) Just take one day at a time. I remember being horrified soon after lo was born, thinking god, have I really got to go through this for the next 6 months. Then I made myself think 'right, if I can just do another week' and somehow the weeks passed and things had got better without me really being aware of it.

Has anyone checked for tongue tie? Probably a long shot but I found out far too late that tt was one of our many problems.

Spink - my hear goes out to you - it remonds me so much of my experience feeding DS1, when I had undiagnosed bfeast thrush for weeks. If you print off the BFN leaflet you can take it to your GP - if they won't prescribe, you could ask to see another GP maybe?

I had thrush 4 times with DS1 and it was such misery and that feekling of not being able to feed my baby was so upsetting.

You can self medicate by buying Canesten one dose tablets over the counter (150mg tablet = £11.99), plus Daktarin cream for you and oral gel for your LO.

Massive [hugs] to you

God spink I'm sop sorry this is still going on for you. I remember it so well.

In the end I went to a homeopath and it cleared up in 24 hours of taking the remedy after four weeks of terrible pain.

My hv then told me farmers give dairy cows homeopathic remedies.

It's worth a go.

Good luck.