Bleeding nipples and blood in baby's vomit

[violeta]

My baby girl is 5 days old and I have been breastfeeding from the beginning and really want to continue. She's my first baby. Trouble is the last few days my nipples have firstly cracked and are now bleeding. It really doesn't hurt that much, and I could get through it, the problem is that the baby is vomiting my blood from the nipples, and it is red blood. I went to A and E today, just to check that the blood really was mine and not hers, which it is. Paeds have recommended that I leave breastfeeding till my nipples heal, that I use formula in the meantime and express my milk to keep up supply. There's no blood in the milk when I express (so I'll give this milk to my baby rather than the devil's liquid) which is good news but in the mind of the mumsnet experts here is there another way? Will the bottles affect latching on when I do go back to breastfeed? I obviously want the best for my baby and the last thing I want is for her to throw up my blood, poor little thing, so if this is the only way I will persevere.
Thanks, and sorry for the long essay!

congratulations on your new baby. i'm not a bfing expert, i'm sure one will be along soon (maybe tomorrow, this is a UK site so most activity is daytime/evening GMT) but i can give you some thoughts in the absence of anyone else.

have you been able to contact a bfing counsellor to get them to look at your latch? that's really the best help to get, in my experience paeds and doctors are awfully quick to recommend formula, whereas a BFC can actually help you to keep bfing exclusively. if you are in the UK i can really recommend goiing to www.howbreastfeedingworks.com as all of the relevant numbers are on the front page.

have you heard of lansinoh? gosh, it's good stuff. get it tomorrow, it'll help your poor nips. i think it's about £11 and i remember buying it in mothercare in the UK. but i'm sure you can get it all over.

in the meantime, fresh air and breastmilk gently put onto the sore nipples will be the best thing to help them heal.

i introduced a bottle at about 5 days (on advice of, you guessed it, paeds) and i did regret it becuase the expressing etc affected my supply, but it's not a one-size-fits-all thing, your supply might be fine. (mine was a bit rubbish, tbh). it's maybe not a course of action i'd take until i'd had a live human BFC had looked at my latch, though. do you think you can stick it out a bit longer?

this happened to my friend, by the way, and her docs pointed out that until very recently the baby was swimming around in all manner of her bodily fluids so a bit of blood wasn't goiing to be the end of him. but it's what you feel comfortable with, obviously.

as i say, congratulations, remember that bfing is a co-operative process so both of you are getting a crash course right now. you don't have to decide immediately if you think you can stick out the bfing with the sore nips.

oh, and nipple shields too. not something i know a jot about but worth a try if you're thinking about going onto formula directly, perhaps? some people don't like them, tbh (i'm not actually sure why but i'm sure it's relevant) but imo better to try them before the formula thing.

and hey, if you give it your best shot and end off mix feeding or ffing, there are worst things. it's what i did. it's important, but it's not the sum of you as a mother. but it's nice to know you've really tried and had good information and support, isn't it? good luck.

Aitch gave some great advice but I just wanted to say two things.

Firstly I used nipple shields for the whole time I bf DS1 (13 mths) in total and they were a saviour to me. Some people say they affect supply but I don't think they had that affect on me and I know others on MN have used them successfully too. They take the edge off the pain and give your nipples a chance to heal which they can do very quickly given half the chance.

Second thing is that expressing is very difficult very early on. I didn't get the hang of it until DS1 was at least 6 weeks old and it is common not to produce much by expressing at the beginning. I just wanted to say don't be discouraged and think your milk supply is drying up if you don't get much - it won't take that long for your nipples to heal enough to go back to bf so don't despair if you have to give a bottle or two.

Congratulations on your baby girl though! I really hope everything works out for you.

This happened to my DD when she was 3 days old.
Scared the bejesus out of me when she vomited blood.
My nipples were sore and cracked, i got some nipple shields from mothercare, they helped a bit, still felt a bit of pain but not real painful. She wasn't too keen on them though.
Now i'm trying to get her used to the bottle,still my milk,but she's a stubborn little thing.

As i always suggest/recommend!... Silverette is definately your answer.. i had a deep, open gash on my areola and was completely healed within 2 days, never to crack again until dd bit me! but i just popped them on again and was brand new in no time.

AND they are still on sale.. i paid £43 for mine! and they were worth every last penny of it

I had the same problem and used nipple shields and expressing as a temporary measure. Seeing the blood come out of them is awful isn't it.

The shields didn't affect my supply and i couldn't have got through the first few weeks without them. My DD didn't seems to mind them or the bottle - it didn't make her latch any worse. No-one could find anything wrong with my DD latch, but by eight weeks she was feeding better and didn't need the shields any more.

I know using them isn't ideal, but if you view them as temporary until you get the feeding problems sorted.

Hope your DD starts feeding better soon.

As suggested try and see a BFC to get your latch checked

kellymom has good info on wet healing of cracked nipples
do not let them dry out, then they scab up and it takes longer to heal

lansinoh is good or kamillosan
if you are in the UK you should be able to get your GP to prescribe it

Congratulations on your new baby.
I had the very same problem, and was in pain for about 6 weeks....glad I persevered though still bf 10 months on......I would never have managed without nipple sheilds though AVENT make great silicon ones.
Lansinoh works wonder too
Good Luck

Thanks for all of the advice. I didn't know nipple shields existed till reading this, so I have been using them for the last couple of days now. My midwife has shown me how to properly latch her on, as I just wasn't taught how to do it in the hospital (which caused the problems in the first place). One side has healed now with the help of ebm, lansinoh and kamillosan but the other still bleeds even through the shields so I am expressing from that side (with an electric pump) so giving dd a bottle with ebm every other feed. I hope this is all okay and won't affect things in the long run as I want to exclusively breastfeed straight from the nipple. I also hope doing all of this won't affect my supply?