My little girl is 4 weeks today and I’ve struggled with feeding on and off since she was born. The first week was awful as she was trying to bring my milk in and was feeding what felt like constantly day and night - it took about 7-8 days to come in which was put down to a 4 day latent labour, induction and eventually an EMCS. She dropped 10.2% of birth weight by day 3 but has slowly but steadily gained since then and was back at birth weight earlier this week. For the first week or two my nipples were visibly cracked and bleeding, but have healed and visibly look much better. I felt like week 2-3 things were improving. The problem I’m having is my right breast feels generally quite comfortable now, but my left is still really painful when feeding and also feels a bit sore now even when not feeding. When my baby first goes on, it feels like really sharp little stabbing pains in my nipple, which then eases off a little but still continues to feel that way throughout the feed. It’s only just bearable and I dread feeding on the left side. This evening I’ve noticed a little white patch on the end of the left nipple too. I have always been told the latch seems fine by various midwives and the infant feeding team. A few midwives noticed what they thought was a posterior tongue tie but when we went to the tongue tie appointment, the specialist midwife that saw us said baby just has a pronounced frenulum and that it isn’t tongue tie, as she can poke her tongue out and it has good range of movement. My little girl has always seemed happy on the breast although this week she’s been a bit fussy during a few feeds, pulling my nipple about and occasionally crying a bit.
I knew breastfeeding wouldn’t be a walk in the park but I really didn’t realise it would be this difficult/painful 😔 but I do really want to persevere and eventually be able to enjoy it - any advice or thoughts would be very appreciated!