what is breastfeeding supposed to feel like?

[Spink]

this might sound like a bit of a numpty question, but I'm wondering if it is really true that "if you're doing it right, it doesn't hurt".

In my own experience, it often HAS hurt, and I really don't know if that is because I have always done it 'wrong' or if I just have sensitive boobs / children with a particularly piranha-like approach
I breastfed ds til he was 14 months and am breastfeeding dd, who is 4 weeks, so I should know I guess - but if I'm honest, with ds it was horribly painful for the first few months and then was sometimes uncomfortable but always noticeable - a definite sucking/pulling sensation. Let down often stings. With dd, it was very sore for the first two weeks and now just uncomfortable at times. Apparently my (and my dc's) positioning and latch have always been fine.

For those of you who have found breastfeeding fairly straightforward, what does it feel like?? Is there any sensation at all? and where on the spectrum of comfort-discomfort is it?
Just want to make sure my expectations of what 'correct' breastfeeding should feel like are right...

well ladies i shall certainly be doing my homework, looking up threads and trying to find out as much as poss im only 22 weeks so got some time yet, thankyou very much by the way!

My other major, major tip is to find out where your local breastfeeding clinic is before you have the baby and get yourself down there as soon as you're physically able. They will help you sort your latch, teach you different ways to hold your baby and you'll (or you should) walk out of there being able to bf your baby walking around the room. I wish I'd gone about 3 weeks before I actually did - would have saved me loads of grief

Congratulations on your pregnancy by the way

letdown feels like a really strong nipple erection (is that what it is called?) if you get very cold with nothing on (Think: getting undressed after a swim in August in Sufflok)

like a strong painless cramp in your boob.

BF can be quite amazing , the feeling you get of bonding afterwards with your baby, whether or not you have had shooting pains etc, is incredibel. I honestly fall in love with DS completely after every feed, whisper sweet nothings into his ear and cuddle him so much. Oxytocin does this, it is the same thing which makes you feel good after orgasm, and it is wicked. I am missing it big-time, as my DS is refusing to BF since yesterday

Good luck

Suffolk, not sufflok

Also, a bit but don't expect too much help from the nurses after you have had the baby. You may well be lucky, but for me they just left me to get on with it.

If you arm yourself with info and have your DP onside it will all be much easier.

good luck

Suffolk, not sufflok

Kitty, for most women it doesn't hurt. We are in the minority. Let's face it, how many women use Mumsnet? Hundreds of thousands and around 7 have come onto this thread to say that breastfeeding hurt for them.

Thing is, you won't know unless you try. It might be absolutely fine. You can always try and if it doesn't suit, give up. But once you decide not to, you can't really change your mind later on as your milk soon dries up.

I understand what you mean about the sexualisation thing, I had a big issue with breastfeeding. I hate my image and was always ribbed by my family about the size of my boobs (very small), so much so that I was ashamed of them and myself. I didn't even like my dh seeing them. But I soon found that my attitude towards them changed. My mother was very cruel and often told me that I wouldn't have enough milk because my boobs wouldn't hold enough and that my dd looked like she was starving. But I did manage to feed her and I was so proud to prove them wrong, which is what gave me the incentive to carry on when it was bloody painful and to feed ds for much longer. It changed my attitude towards my boobs, I became proud of them and instead of covering them up all the time I'm now happy for dh to see them. They are fantastic things!

Trust me, once you start feeding your child, your attitude DOES change. They don't lose their sexual image, but they become something else too and it's like you are almost in awe of them.

Give it a go.

I dunno Rhubarb, of all of my close friends not a single one has found BF easy and pain-free. Most of them have had a real struggle and been very proud when they have finally got into it - which is a good reason to keep at it.

Out of all of them I had by far the easiest time and still found the let-down pain awful - and that was unavoidable - there is nothing I could have done to stop it.

Maybe a lot of women forget/gloss over it a bit? If every single woman i know well enough to have intimate conversations has told me that they found it painful for various reasons then i have to believe that for most women at least it is painful.

The only one who said she had no trouble was my boss at work but she was a hyper-competitive bitch...

I found bfeeding very painful at first too. I put it down to bad latch and thrush but someone in RL has since told me that some people's nipples are just sensitive....

It's certainly not painful now (unless DS2 bites!). I agree with others on here that current NHS guidelines suggesting that it shouldn't hurt are very damaging - the fact that bf might be painful would generally not put most women off from trying - we know labour is painful but we still go ahead and conceive babies after all.

Tryharder that has made me remember something. When we had our BF class with the NCT I went armed with questions from what my friends had told me.

I specifically wanted to know how to avoid thrush, mastitis and cracked nipples and what I should do if they happened to me.

The woman looked really angry with me and said that these things were so rare they weren't worth mentioning.

I said I was only asking because all of my close friends had suffered problems including these and I wanted to avoid them if possible.

She said it was bizarre that all of my friends had had problems as it was very very rare and the vast majority of people had no problems at all.

Then she gave me a nasty look and talked about something else.

Why won't they talk about any of the possible problems? They aren't rare, and if women don't have full info then when they experience difficulty it may well be enough to put them right off.

I've said this before on MN and I'll say it again- bf has been by far the most difficult thing about childbearing including the 'bearing' bit!

tumtumtetum I agree these problems are not rare- just about everyone I know who has bf has experienced some pain/issues. Of course there are loads of women who have no problems at all- but to brush aside problems as 'rare' is no help at all. Sadly I was not one of the easy peasy group- thrush plus bad latch=crack for 10 weeks. No exaggeration!

The first time DS was on properly on one side it felt 'soft' and it's taken so long to get that feeling on the right. Perseverence and a breast feeding counseller are my top tips!

Let down for me feels twinge-y, like when you eat something sour and your cheeks twinge. That's the only way I can explain it- it's really intense and uncomfortable! And I feel odd about 30 seconds before it happens (so know when I'm about to spring a leak!), it's a weird happy, excited sensation and if it's going to be a really strong let down I feel a bit sick! So strange. That oxytocin is powerful stuff!

tumtumtetum, I don't think these are rare problems. How odd that the NCT person should say that.

They are relatively easy to nip in the bud though, by good positioning and making sure your milk keeps flowing (maybe by using a pump if necessary). I am not sure about thrush, but forewarned is forearmed, and I am sure GPs are used to seeing that.

Why would the NCT not discuss these things?

I have no idea why they wouldn't talk about them, I think it's all to do with the whole reason this thread was started, that for some reason people are intent on saying that if you do it properly it won't hurt.

I asked my questions and got no answers.

Luckily I had lots of books to read and my friends to talk to.

I was met with the same response when I asked about induction and CS in my groups - apparently we were only to discuss "natural" birth as anything else is unusual and not worth discussing.

Given the CS and induction rates I think that is a bit silly.

There seems to be an aversion to giving women the full information about everything - birth and BF - the message seems to be birth will be a doddle if you breath properly, you've let yourself down if you have drugs/interventions as they are unnecessary, and BF won't hurt. As (wild guess) only about 10% of women have an experience like that it seems rather unhelpful.

The CS thing is ridiculous as well. At my NCT classes, we had to set up an operating theatre with little Playmobile figures, to show what we thought would happen in a CS. It was very revealing because we all had the wrong idea, and had underestimated how many people would need to be in the room with us. One couple had a very forlorn Playmobile figure outside the door, and they said they thought this would be the father! (They didn't realise he would probably be allowed in).

They explained the process and common reasons for needing one, about scar care, special NCT pants and the need for physio afterwards, the need to keep doing pelvic floor exercises afterwards, and about the emotional impact of having to have one. I think that's reasonable enough. It doesn't mean most people won't have a natural birth. It does however mean that if you are being wheeled off for an emergency section, you will have a bit of useful information stored in your brain somewhere, and you won't have to panic so much.

With bf they went through how to get a good latch by turning the baby towards you and not trying to emulate a bottlefeeding position (which is different and doesn't work), how to make sure the baby is opening its mouth wide enough and getting the whole areola in, how to sit properly (the hardest bit IMO), rugby ball and lying down techniques, the need to drink plenty so you don't sacrifice yourself to the cause (baby will be fine!), the difference between fore and hind milk, the occasional link between eating lots of grapes and loose stools in the baby, the need to keep milk flowing to avoid mastitis, how to massage the breast to get rid of lumps in the milk ducts, how to deal with engorgement on days 3-4 by using flannels and cabbage leaves, a bit about nipple care and not using too many commercial products on them for the sake of it, and there was probably other stuff too I can't remember!

I don't think your NCT teacher sounds the most thorough on the planet tbh.

Plus I would add I am very good at bf and have fed three children with excellent positioning and a good latch, and I always get slightly sore nipples at the beginning and the odd small blood blister on there while things are toughening up each time. FGS it's like attaching a small hoover to one of your most sensitive parts! There is going to be a bit of rough and tumble going on while both you and the baby work out how best to do it. The best advice I got was a MW telling me it was like learning to dance with a new partner. If people are telling you different they must have nipples like elephant hide.

Our NCT teacher was pretty good and I think it was time more than anything else that meant she didn't cover the thrush/mastitis/sore nips stuff.

What bothers me more is the idea most professionals bandy around; that if you get your positioning and latch right, you won't have these problems and will have nothing but breastfeeding joy. Which is crap, from what people on here, and friends in RL have said.

All of the health care professionals I saw (and there were quite a few!!) basically said "you won't have pain if your technique is good... Your technique is good... you shouldn't have pain". Which was not so useful!

It would've been so reassuring had one of them said (after checking out positioning and stuff, natch) - maybe your technique isn't a problem, maybe your nipples are very sensitive, maybe they'll toughen up with time, maybe your child's mouth will 'grow into' your boobs, etc etc. Even if it the pain didn't go, knowing that I was normal and doing everything I could would've really helped. And knowing that it might just change for the better, with time, would have given me a more positive outlook about the whole thing too.

I've just remembered that, very oddly, the nct bf counselor I saw with ds used to be a staunch positioning girl and when I saw her the other day, with dd, she had totally changed tack and is now into biological nurturing (I think that's what it's called?). So she refused to look at my positioning and latch and told me I should let baby find her own way and that it "might hurt until baby works out what is best for her". It was a bit annoying as I DID want her to check that I wasn't doing anything obviously wrong that was making my boobs hurt and she was having none of it at all. From one extreme to the other...

The trouble with telling mums that it might hurt is that in most cases if there is pain (after the first few seconds) it's because of a problem with positioning and latch. so if a mum thinks 'oh well they said it might hurt' she won't even TRY to get things sorted which can lead to much bigger problems.

the reason that most of us know someone who has had major problems is because as a culture we are re-learning how to breastfeed. there aren't as many neighbourhood resources (mums, aunts, sisters, friends) we don't SEE breastfeeding regularly enough to know what it's supposed to look/feel like, and there's very few people we can ask (most MWs, HVs and GPs are useless IME)

one thing though, yes, letdown can hurt. mine felt like someone was pinching my boobs really hard. sadly there's not much we can do about that and it isn't a reflection of latch.

Tumtumtetum - I had a very similar experience. We all wanted to know what to do if it hurt and her answer, almost word for word was "I'm going to tell you how to do it right so you don't have to worry about getting it wrong or it hurting" .

Well fuck her. That was SO much help to me when 8 weeks in I was still sobbing through every feed because it hurt so much.

There's this idea that telling people that it can hurt will put them off. Yes, it will do. But the women who are put off trying because it might hurt are obviously not terribly committed to the idea of breastfeeding anyway. They'll give up anyway as soon as it hurts or their baby doesn't "seem full" etc etc etc. I say this not as criticism. Meanwhile there are plenty of women who really want to breastfeed but are thwarted by lack of information or complete misinformation.

We all know that childbirth is going to hurt, and most of us cope better for knowing that beforehand and preparing for it in every way possible.

Thank goodness I found this thread. When asked what would have kept me BF longer (DS had his jaw pushed out of alignment by the forceps - undiagnosed for 2 weeks - by which time I'd given up watching him puke and poo my blood and having breast pads worse than sanitary towels). I was constantly told I was doing something wrong and that it should be easy. It didn't help that my mum and sister found BF easier than breathing and were no help at all.

Now I know that my experience is rare as no doctor diagnosed what was actually wrong (a cranial osteopath who saw him for his 'ventouse' head found it). However, there was no support for me from the HCPs that I saw. Everyone told me that it should not hurt, that if it did it was wrong.

Now, when asked, I would say that the reason people give up is that they are sold this unrealistic expectation that BF is always easy, pain free and you're doing it wrong if it hurt. I've spoken frankly to many friends, since my experience, who BF much, much longer than I did and most found some aspect of it difficult (let down, cracked nipples, mastitis, etc). The ones who were rare were the ones who took to it like my mum and sister.

I am 23 weeks pregnant with DC2 and feel so much more informed this time round. I agree with Spink that knowing that it gets better too, would make you feel so much more positive about it all...

It hurt for the first two weeks with both of mine. No actual blood or cracks, they were always properly latched, just that my nipples are always tender at first and take that time to toughen up. I fed the three of them for a total of 5 years, so it can't have been that bad...

"both"? wtf? I have three!

Lol duchesse!

purplemonkey yep, I agree that telling women it might hurt even when they are doing it right COULD mean that they don't try to correct underlying problems.

It's so complicated - I don't know if the pain I'm getting at the moment is down to something I'm not getting quite right, or just something dd and I will grow out of. And no one can seem to help me work it out. SO FRUSTRATING. Not helped by one of the bfing counselors telling me that she thought lots of hvs and mws miss problems with latches etc and tell women everything is fine when it isn't. Doesn't feel like you can trust the professionals who are supposed to be experts on this stuff.

I do think I would have dealt with problems first time round, with ds, better, and been less hard on myself, if I'd known that pain was so common, and not always a sign of a problem with technique.