correct gape

[Coombsy]

I have a 5 week old daughter who I'm breast feeding. She's has a good appetite and although it's not agony to feed her it's certainly not comfortable. My boob often aches afterwards and I have real problems getting her mouth to open wide enough, meaning she bobs on and off the breast and gets frustrated or I just put up with her not being latched on properly and end up sore. I'd expected that I would have got the hang of breast feeding by now and I'm feeling quite despondent about the whole thing, how can I encourage a better gape? I've tried gently pulling her mouth down but she often gets her hands in the way and what with holding her at the same time I don't have enough hands. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Well I'm no expert, but I had trouble getting DD2 to open her mouth! They haven't always read the books about how to do it properly

I used to sort of tickle her top lip with my nipple and when she opened her mouth really quickly stuff her on. It would often take quite a few goes to get her to go on properly. If she was on but only taking nipple I would take her off and keep trying til it was right. Also liberal application of lansinoh helps the nipples IME.

HTH

They open their mouths to cry as well. Not saying make her cry obviously, but if you can't get it right and she starts to be frustrated and opens her mouth to protest, that is often when it finally works!

this might be stupid advice, but when she's latched on, can you sort of stuff more breast in? Works for me!
It will get better anyway as she gets older

Oh yes stealth I have done that too! If you get some in, they sometimes wriggle and open their mouths a bit at which point you can stuff more in. Yes.

It's not very elegant a lot of this

loving the stealth idea! I'll persevere with trying her on and off until she latches on properly, fingers crossed it'll come together soon, had no idea such trickery and faffing would be invovled when I embarked on this breast feeding malarky!

My friend squeezed her boob to make it flatter and kind of 'posted' her boob in like a letter. Sounds bizarre, but it worked. Also, you cna kind of pull their bottom lip down a bit further once they're on and they take a bit more into their mouth as they feed. That worked for me.

Keep going, you're doing fabulously x