My baby is approaching 11 months old with 4 teeth and he has recently started biting when he feeds. I think it may partly be teething but definitely sometimes he thinks it is a game and is really proud for having given me a bite. It’s obviously extremely painful and he has broken the skin around my nipples. It’s horrible having painful bleeding nipples again after so much effort in the early days to fix latch, cut tongue tie, yada yada!
I am taking him off and putting him down after every bite but what this means is that he is missing most of his feeds (as even if we try again a few minutes later he just bites again) and I am also getting a bit engorged which is adding to my discomfort. He is currently figuring out walking so I have no scope to sit down and pump uninterrupted until after he’s gone to bed in the evening. I also don’t know if I should be offering him bottles instead but then he’s not going to have the impetus to feed properly instead of faffing about at the breasts is he?
What is making this all really hard is that both my DH and my DM are insistent that this biting is the signal that I should stop altogether (both have been encouraging me to stop for ages so this is just another excuse…), but both me and LO love breastfeeding and I had envisioned continuing for the foreseeable. I am just looking for someone to tell me that it’ll get better and we don’t have to stop really!