Help - Teeth are breaking skin and baby won't take formula/ebm etc

[bzzbee]

Hello

I hope someone can help. My exclusively breastfed 7.5 month old has got 3 teeth now and when she feeds there is constant pressure from one of the spikes. She's not actually biting, so pulling her off with a firm No doesn't help, it's just the combination of latch/teeth position I guess.
During the week this constant pressure has eventually caused an actual cut through the skin around my nipple, and now the area is extremely painful and sore. The problem is she won't drink from a bottle, will sip water from a Doidy cup (and tiny amounts of ebm) but flat-refuses formula milk. Even expressing is painful now.
My questions are, but I am really grateful for any comments/advice:

• can i feed from one side for a day or two to allow healing, and will she get ENOUGH milk? (i could probably endure expressing once or twice a day on the sore side)
• any tips for getting her to accept formula? She is very strong-willed (aren't they all, I know!).

-any tips for getting the area to heal quickly?

• are there any devices (breast shields? I've never seen/used on so not sure what it does) I can use to make feeding less painful?
• i've tried different positions to see if the latch might change but it seems to make no difference - probably because at this stage the damage is done and ANY pressure now hurts. However any tips on what else I could try would be gratefully accepted!
• is this something the support organisations (ie LLL) could help with? I've been so fortunate so far and have never needed any help breastfeeding!

Thanks a lot in advance

I noticed no one had answered you, I had the same problem and as my dd refused to drink formula, I ended up keeping going and now it does not hurt anymore unless she sucks really hard if she is for any reason really needing a drink or unless she bites which is not so frequent anymore. If you rest the bad side by slightly favouring the better side it might help. there have been threads about this, to get them to drink formula, you have to never give up trying and in the end it seems a lot of them take it in the end.

Ouch, poor you! Although I didn't get such sore nipples, feeding was uncomfortable for a little while when my D started getting teeth, but he seemed to adjust his latch after a little while

1. It's definitely worth giving one of the support orgs a call. I am sure they get loads of questions about this

2. kellymom.com has very good bf info and here's a link to something about teeth and just below that is a link to info on healing cut nipples

3. If you are sure you want to intro formula, then you can mix EBM and formula - so start with mostly EBM and a bit of formula and gradually increase the proportion of formula until it is all formula.

Thanks JL and HQ.

I will try your suggestions, don't really want to be forced to give up just yet..

One thing i find when we have this problem (it seems to happend every few weeks) is using an extra cushion or crossing my leg so that ds is higher up and this either means he latches on ever so slightly differently or it means he is not pulling down on the breast, thus easing the pressure.