Why does everyone tell you breastfeeding doesn't hurt?

[mummyclare]

I am baffled by the unrealistic advise given to pregnant women about breastfeeding by the NCT/midwives/BFCs like -

If it hurts you are doing it wrong.
Every women produces enough milk at the beginning to feed twins.
99% of women can successfully breastfeed.

I understand their role is to encourage women to do it but surely being honest about the difficulties of starting that many women encounter would be more helpful. Mothers who then have difficulty are left feeling they've failed when they are trying to pick up the pieces. Likewise problems may not get as bad if we were honest to women about it.

e.g. First few feeds with my first I kept detaching her because it was hurting and I thought she wasn't latched on correctly.

[bumblingalong]

was expecting it to hurt but was in agony for the first wk but was told by 4 different health visitors & countless midwives in hospital that i was doing it right & by the book. Was about to give up due to extremely bad cracked nipples & bleeding when a new hv said to try a different way & throw the book out- so uncurled my toes & tried 1 last time..... was so much better & i could carry on!
The general one position fits all approach needs to be looked at as several friends have given up because they couldn't get their babies to latch on "right".

[EachPeachPearMum]

Maybe I was lucky, maybe I have extremely unsensitive nipples, but it didn't hurt at all for me. Let down felt odd, occasionally uncomfortable, but never painful.
I saw new mothers feeding through bleeding nipples and the like, so I know there are lots of people who do have problems but it is like anything else- some will find it easy some will find it difficult.
I think what needs to be stressed is the fact that as long as your baby is fed, however you do it, what works for you is right.
I am a complete wuss about pain btw, so I think I must just have no nerves in my breasts or something!

[whomovedmychocolate]

Actually even when you are very good at feeding it can hurt - my boobs hurt during let down when I was pregnant and still feeding DD and when tandem feeding two kids, one with a stronger suckle than the other, that hurts too but don't ask me why. If breastfeeding counsellors had to specify every situation where discomfort might be experienced then it'd be a very long meeting!

For me, for the first six weeks, let down was particularly painful and for the first four days my latch wasn't great (but I refused to acknowledge this fact) and it did hurt. Then someone helped me and since then, by and large for the past two years, very little pain indeed (except for trapping my nips in the laptop when feeding, reading mumsnet and trying to shop DH shoulder surfing the bumsex threads!)

[pudding25]

I am reading this thread and thinking how lucky I have been. DD is 4mths. I was never going to BF, didnt fancy it . Decided a couple of wks before she was born to 'give it a go' for a wk.

Told my midwives to feed every 3hrs for about 20 mins. Also, DD had a tongue tie (which we got sorted).
So, I was really a prime candidate for ff and BF failure.

4mths on, still BF (although do give a couple of bottles of formula to get a break as can't express) and have no plans to stop.

Have loads of milk, DD happy from the beginning to only feed every 3 hrs most of the time, not much pain (just got some cabbage leaves which sorted it out) and tongue tie did not really affect BF and then she got it cut.

Don't want to sound like I am boasting but just that I must be in the minority.

There just needs to be more good BF support available from day 1.

[HaventSleptForAYear]

I wish I had known that it DOES hurt to bf.

After DS1 was born, I kept quite happily putting him to my breast, he kind of mouthed it for a bit, and I thought that was a feed .

He was sleepy from a long birth with epidural so not that interested anyway (still not interested in food lol!).

3 days later he (understandably) starting making himself heard.

Luckily an African friend of mine came, said, "isn't he hungry?" and helped me latch him on.

Cue toe-curling, fist-clenching etc.

I took a paracetemol before each feed (also for the after-pains which accompanied each bf).

Was still sore after 6 weeks so I got the latch corrected a bit and fed him for a year.

With DS2 I knew what to expect, didn't get cracked nipples cos I was equipped with lansinoh, but I certainly could FEEL it when he latched on.

[PInkyminkyohnooo]

Period pains for some are absolute agony- my poor sis has to virtually knock herself unconscious with painkillers once a month they are so bad and she's having to have a hysterectomy to get her life back.

Not sure all this talk of pain thresholds is very useful.

Some people's nipples may well just be more sensitive than others.

I've had major surgery, mennorraghia, severe migrianes, a back to back labour, all manner of things but I'll still jump out of bed yelling if I get a bad cramp in my leg! The pain when bfeeding I had lasted about two weeks and if gritted my teeth and carried on chatting to whoever was there I could distract myself enough tokeep going. And that was with both babies.

[TinkerBellesMum]

I know PT, I had two natural labours and am told I sounded like I'd stubbed my toe (ow ow ow, bit like Phoebe's earlier contraction in Friends lol) and I had a time when I couldn't put my bum on the seat when she was latched I was tensing so much and would be punching the arm of the chair so I didn't shout. But I don't believe everyone who says it hurts is in as much pain as that, it's not normal to be screaming in pain like that - I had an infection.

The problem is support though, I've just spoken to someone on SANDS who was told to give up by her GP when she had mastitis. People are brought up to listen to their doctors and nurses not question them so when a doctor tells someone to give up and offers them a pill they do because it wouldn't occur to them that someone who hasn't been through years of medical school could know better than their GP. "Fortunately" for me I've got a condition that I need to know more than my GP about so it's in my nature now to question what I'm told by a HCP.

[spicemonster]

Nah tiktok I'm sure it didn't say 'doing it right' but it did imply that there was something wrong if it hurt. And I suspect letdown feels very different for everyone. It probably feels like pain for some and discomfort for others. Much like some women are in agony with period pains and others sail through barely noticing them

[PinkTulips]

totally know what you're getting at with differing pain thresholds tink but in my case at least i'm not sure that applies.

i've had 2 very long, tough labours without so much as gas and air and never so much as groaned or moaned.

in the early stages of bf-ing dd i was screaming and sobbing with pain..... which frightened the life out of dp who's just watched me deliver her without flinching and was now watching me writhing in pain and crying at every feed

[MilaMae]

[hoppybird]

Oh, I'm not implying that everyone should persevere and soldier bravely on despite the turmoils and hardships - I was simply relating my own personal experience with regards to the pain I expected and then the different kind of pain I experienced when we got thrush.

[MilaMae]

Hmmm the agony I felt more was a little more than exercise pains,it was intolerable.

I have a very high pain threshold and have encountered plenty of pain before bfeeding. After 7 years of fertility treatment I can safely say I know all about perseverance too. Didn't make one jot of difference with my experience of bfeeding. I persevered, it didn't work,my 3 babies starved, I gave up.

[hoppybird]

When I first had ds, I was also under the impression that "if it hurts, you're not doing it right" - not sure where that came from. As ds was prem and in SCBU for 3 weeks, we didn't have an ideal start, so was pretty much prepared for it not to be easy. Once he was allowed to try to latch on around 5 days after birth, I realised pretty quickly that his tiny little mouth would make it difficult as he kept slipping off and ended up right on the nipple, but fortunately, I had been shown how to detach and try again. I think it was because of the non-standard situation that I was prepared for some negative feeding experiences, so I was able to persevere through difficulties. (he self-weaned at 18mths).

A week or so out of hospital, bf was going ok, but was still a bit sore (no-one had advised Lansinoh - was unbelievably brilliant second time round). Due to being on AB's ds got thrush in his mouth and latching on felt like needles going through my nipples - I used to sing at the top of my voice with the pain. I pointed out the white spots on his tongue to my HV, and mentioned the abnormal pain, asking if it could be thrush, and she said "I'm not sure, might not be, you need to check with the GP" [hmm} - at the time I put it down to her being too cautious and scared of misdiagnosing. Obviously it was thrush, and the treatment worked within a couple of days. A bit worrying that she didn't have the skills to confidently diagnose it though. I felt that if I hadn't mentioned thrush, she would have just suggested that the latch was poor. I'm sure others have plenty of stories about how HV's are unconfident when giving bf advice.

Breastfeeding is like embarking upon a new exercise regime - your body is doing something it's not used to, sometimes it feels weird because you've not used your body in that way before, but that's ok, it's normal. Sometimes you might feel a little sore at first as your getting used to it, but as you go on, it should get easier and easier and more rewarding. Some people just don't get to that 'rewarding' stage with their exercise regime - they neither enjoy nor really hate it - they feel it's just something they need to do. The same could be said of breastfeeding. It's always best to get a good trainer to advise you and show you how to do your exercises in the best way - same with breastfeeding. If you get pains while exercising, you seek advice, find out why, if there's anything you can change. Sometimes, it might be best if you stop...I won't go on, I think you get the drift.

[nooka]

tiktok I think the problem is that health professionals get into the habit of using phrases that can get a bit devoid of meaning. I have done a fair bit of notes review (previous auditor) and you come across all sorts of stock phrases that are either euphemisms or meaningless. It can be very problematic. I remember vividly reading my hand held notes where my midwife had written "happy to go into hospital" when I had agreed to go into hospital for ds's birth, after my planned home birth plans went wrong because my waters were meconium stained. I was not happy at all - I was in floods of tears! It really damaged my relationship with that midwife, but in truth she just used the term "happy" when she should have said "consented". I have arranged lawyers to come into our PCT to give training on this issue, as people are often really amazingly unaware of the impact of what they say and write.

[nooka]

I think you are right Tinker, and I do have a high pain threshold, so maybe that's why I don't think it was a big deal (I broke my arm and jaw a few years ago and the hospital were amazed with the x-rays as they hadn't thought I had more than cuts and bruises). Also we are hard wired to forget physical pain very quickly, so given a few years (or even months) it is likely that we forget. This is probably a good thing as otherwise no one would ever have more than one child

[tiktok]

It would be enormously helpful if HCPs and anyone else who writes stuff or talks to mothers could stop themselves from saying 'doing it wrong' or 'doing it right'.

It sounds judgemental. And women in pain think they're being labelled as incompetent.

I cannot understand why midwives and health visitors who use these phrases fail to see how irritating (at best) they are and hurtful (at worst).

[MilaMae]

Don't really like this 'enough for twins" expression. When you're struggling the last thing you want to hear is somebody prattling on about you producing enough for twins when you can barely get enough into a singleton. I know several others who find this expression annoying too.

As a mum of twins and a singleton can I just say you do produce gallons more when feeding twins I've done both so know, I expect very few 'experts" have.

Having said that I agree with the theory to some extent in that supply both times was never an issue(had masses) it was getting it in to the little blighters ie latch. You can produce as many gallons as you like but if you can't get it into them you and they are stuffed as I found out.

I firmly believe that far more time needs to be spent on support in those early days that really is the most important thing, it is not always possible to learn the art of getting a baby to latch on correctly on your own.

And yes it does bloody hurt, equally annoying phrase number 2- 'if you're doing it right it shouldn't hurt'.

[Oblomov]

I was under the impression, rightly or wrongly, that bf was NOT supposed to hurt. I thought that if you were doing it right, it was not supposed to hurt. If the latch was good etc. That is what I had always had in my mind.

[TinkerBellesMum]

My trainer said she has visited women who have asked for help because of how bad the pain is. She's asked them to feed the baby and she's chatted with them while they're feeding. Then when they've stopped she's asked how it went and got an answer of "terrible, the pain is excrutiating, I really can't cope with it". This is while they've had a reasonable conversation with her. I think people have wildly differing ideas on what terrible, excrutiating pain that's unbearable is.

One thing I didn't like about my course is the trainer isn't even a parent but argued with us (mothers) when we said there is a certain amount of "pain" or discomfort in the begining - I'm starting to remember the tingles of letdown being pregnant and nursing! I think that people do need to know what's normal pain and what isn't.

[wingandprayer]

I had a lot of pain and problems feeding DS and knew it was down to latch positioning and was desperate for help. When I asked HV for help the breast feeding 'specialist' HV would only give advice over the phone which was not much use. Recently round here they have said there's not enough HV's now so if you have any problems with bf then you have to go back to the hospital for help. So that's really helpful then...Not enough info before birth, no support after. Can only imagine how good the bf levels round here are going to be.

[nooka]

I can't remember anything more than occasional passing pain. Nothing to mention really. But both of mine latched on very well and I only had problems when I weaned (I had breasts like balloons!) I never managed to pump though, and I think that would have helped. However I had no advice (I didn't ask) beyond the initial midwife latching ds on for me pretty much immediately after my c-section. She was great I though, took ds in one hand and my breast in the other, and hey presto, he was off.

I suspect that if you told someone who wasn't at all sure about breastfeeding that it might hurt they would be even less likely to try, which would reduce rates even further.

[Oblomov]

Bf never hurt me. I did not find it easy. And had to go to the local hospital for advice and support. But it did not hurt. I assume I was one of the lucky ones.

[PInkyminkyohnooo]

Sorry for my bad typing..but yes I know. It got to the point where DS just screamed when I put him to my breast. I had to express for weeks until he calmed down and then he latched on just fine. Crazy.

[PInkyminkyohnooo]

tiktok I was told no more than 20 mins every three hours at the hospital where I had DS, then another MW would come in and tell mesomething different- the constantly conflicting advice was what made thigns so hard for me. I did mange to bfeed him for 7 months in the end, but it only started improving when I got home and took control myself. I had to have a bit of an abdab at the hospital to let me go home, as they kept insisting in needed their support with the bfeeding!!

I had loads of milk, to, so no problems with supply.

when I had DD (different hospital) the advice was much more consistent and acuurate.