Why do I find breastfeeding so impossible?

[FrederickSinclair]

I have a 2 day old baby and breastfeeding is going almost exactly how it did with DS1 - not great! I really wanted it to be easier this time but no such luck.

Baby has a good latch (apparently) and seems content between feeds, and my milk has started coming in today, but it's so sore. My nipples are cracked despite using Lansinoh before and after every feed. It really stings so much when baby first latches on, though the pain does ease as the feed goes on.

I just end up getting so hot and flustered and then don't have the patience to settle/wind baby afterwards by the time the feed is done. I can't get comfortable when I'm feeding. Please stop me from reaching for a bottle...

It’s a myth it doesn’t hurt if it is right-hurt like hell for the first 6 weeks for me. No nipple damage, great latch, good weight gain etc. It just took my nipples some time to get over themselves.
4.5 months in, its a doddle. Nothing has changed, I’ve just adjusted.

Obviously pain can be a sign of issues but amongst my NCT (and we are all still EBF) we all agree that it was not painless to start with.

Mine has hurt like a bastard every single time for the past 8 weeks. Total toe curling agony each time. I am fortunate that i combination feed because i needed the breaks the occasional bottle gave me both physically and psychologically. However, today (week 9) it suddenly doesn’t hurt so much. I’ll wait to see if this is the fabled improvement...

Fwiw, i had no cracked nipples, a good latch (checked by multiple people) no tongue tie. It just hurt. The specialist breastfeeding HV who i went to see just shrugged eventually after we’d gone through her checklist and suggested i had unusually sensitive nipples (i don’t). I’ve just read here ^^ the phrase “let down pain” which no one has ever mentioned before, so maybe it was that? Anyway, i am finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope!

I'm sat here nursing my 4 week old. There have been many tears in the last 4weeks and I've nearly given up altogether but since going to breastfeeding meet ups I've felt a bit better.
The latching on pain is intense for me still.... toe curling, teeth gritting pain. The only reason I'm still going is I hear it doesn't last forever!

Buy a pump and alternate feed with express if it helps you to relieve the pain. I introduced a bottle almost immediately with my baby as I knew I was returning to work early. We use closer to nature tommee tippee and she even now at coming up to 4 months is happy to go between bottle and breast xx

Also like pp I had no issues with my nipples cracking etc but it was painful and that did actually settle quite quickly after I just kept at it and had some respite by doing a bottle feed once a day and expressing lots to encourage milk to establish

It's bloody painful when they latch on. It carries on like that for a few weeks along with the cramps from the womb. Unpleasant (very) but it eventually stops, and gets much easier

Wow, I didn't know that cracked nipples could happen in just 2 days.
sorry OP, I'm no help. Letdown hurt me but I never had physical damage, just unpleasant tingling.

Completely relate to your experience op.

It’s like someone’s trapped your nipples in a door.

Nobody ever tells you in advance.

I was also sweaty just from the pain.

I used shields to get through the worst of it. Your body does adjust (more milk so the suck isn’t as strong/painful, and the skin toughens up a bit particularly the first few sucks to get the nipple to the back of the mouth) I thought it would never get better but it did.

My top tip after the silicone shields is to hoick your nipple right to the back of baby’s mouth as soon as they open their mouth, the longer it takes then to drag and suck into the right position the more it hurts. I literally took a deep breath and shoved mine onto the boob.

I salute you, keep going if you can, the more antibodies they get the better, but we don’t judge you if you can’t.

xx

Echoing everything others have said, some degree of pain and tenderness of nipples is normal in the early days (just not widely ‘advertised’) but the degree to which you are experiencing it, alongside the cracking of nipples etc makes me strongly suspect there is an issue with the latch. Many times a cursary glance from a passing midwife can lead to the latch being deemed fine (was certainly the case with me) when in fact a more prolonged session observing a whole feed tells a different tale. I can’t stress enough how important it is to get your baby checked for tongue tie as this is often missed and is a very common cause of nipple pain and nipple injuries. You also mention feeling hot and bothered and irritable when you feed - not unusual when knackered but might also be worth googling dysphoric milk ejection reflex which affects some women in the early days (me included) and presents as various unpleasant feelings / psychological affects and sensations during letdown.

Best of luck and do keep posting / asking for advice from all sources both internet and real life to get you the help you need.

Thank you everyone, I have been reading and so pleased I'm not alone. I had a cry to DH last night and he reminded me how early it all was and how much my body has gone through in the last few days and I realised I need to cut myself some slack.

I remember it's the evening cluster feeding that broke me with DS1, I'm not an evening person at all, and find the whole thing so draining, so we used to give DS1 a bottle in the evening to give me a little break from it all. I did that last night after three hours of cluster feeding, baby went down to sleep and slept for 5 hours! Having that rest made me so much more refreshed this morning, to the point I was waking him up to breastfeed him an hour ago, rather than avoiding the sounds of his rooting for as long as I possibly could!

This bit is really fucking hard. I wish breastfeeding support agencies wouldn't push the whole "it doesn't hurt if you're doing it right" bit. Yes that's true later, but in the early days it's a rare baby who doesn't get the latch wrong the odd time and do some damage before the mum realises and takes them off. Then of course once the damage is done, it's hard to heal because you have to keep feeding.

I found day ten the low point then it got easier. Use the compresses, lansinoh etc. I found wet healing better than dry - leave a soaked breast pad in your bra and all the good stuff in the milk helps your nipples.

If you really do want to breastfeed, keep going, you can push past this bit and it'll get a lot easier (but yes get a tongue tie check). But if you don't, that's completely fine and it's entirely your choice to make.

Have you tried feeding lying down? It's the only way I could get it all established as I found that both DC and I were tense sitting up no matter what kind of pillow arrangement we were propped up on and that it affected the latch.

Try contacting your health visitor/midwife. Milk doesn't come through until day three and until then babies are fussy little critters. Also there's the la leche group on the internet for health and private lactation consultants who can help if breastfeeding is something you want to carry in with.

Good luck

I have to be honest and say I think this is just part and parcel of breastfeeding (given here your baby has a good latch). I felt much better by 4 weeks. I lathered on lanisoh and curled my toes each time baby went on!

I cant see anyone else has suggested it but I found leaving breast milk on the nipples to dry after a feed really helped (you could then apply lanolin after if desired). It does hurt! Well done for trying and good luck

I found breast feeding hard, I said it was like we were both trying to learn Chinese without a tutor and the books we are using are different dialects. The more we did it the easier the “communication” got, I found it took 12 weeks before I eventually found it non stressful/painful.

Good luck, and breast feeding groups are generally very welcoming of other siblings.

@RubaiyatOfAnyone

Yeah. No one mentioned let down pain to me professionally, but my mum was a midwife and she told me. Something to do with the hormones releasing to allow milk to come down having an effect. It was like everything cramping / seizing up and was a really sharp type of pain. Relaxing through it (hard as that is) helped and it would then subside after a few mins. Prob was though you started expecting the pain, so tensed up which didn’t help, did stop after a couple of weeks/months though.

When I fed my FIRST baby - it was completely pain free. No cream, no cracking, easiest thing in the world. Then I got sore and cracked badly when baby was 10 months and no creams helped. I gave up a few weeks later.

With my 2nd baby- 2yrs later , I cracked up on both sides the first feed in hospital! , and such pain! even just pressing the nipple was very painful through & through (pain in the flesh). i was so distraught knowing what a struggle this means. I tried getting help from a few BF counsellors, they all went on about trying different positions, checked for tongue tie, thrush creams ect. no luck. I tried explaining I had none of this with my first (for 10 months) until one counsellor explained to me that she had this with her babies and it seems like I have INTERNAL THRUSH living in my body since the first baby and as soon as I fed the 2nd the skin (weakened by thrush) just cracks up and all the symptoms will come out again. The only way to treat it was with INTERNAL medication called FLUCONOZOLE (400g first does, 200g once a day for 10 days- baby also needs oral gel even if shows no signs of thrush- must be treated same time) i was completely healed after 48hrs and NO PAIN, NO CRACKS!
I was back to care free breastfeeding again till about 5 months, the thrush came out again (seems once you have it its always in the body, the body fights it but eventually the thrush wins..) I took a 2nd course and fed till 14 months when I got sore again and stopped feeding.
When my other babies were born I knew what to watch out for and how to treat my problem and had many happy years breastfeeding my other babies!
I cant say for sure if you have thrush, if you do you would need to try the usual thrush treatment first(CREAMS and ORAL GEL for baby) and if not helping then ask your GP for the internal treatment, but to anyone else reading this, all struggling mothers, I cant believe its normal for breastfeeding for breastfeeding to be painful and be sore and cracked and needing constant creams! maybe all of you in pain above where suffering from internal thrush ?! I wouldn't know the answer , I only have my own experience to tell.

@ESEMEF63 I didn’t have thrush. No cracking or any nipple damage. Just very painful let down. It just took time to adjust.

At my local BF support group they acknowledge that some pain can be normal

That may be so, though I didn't experience it. I meant if someone is sore and cracked and even with thrush creams the cracks dont heal- open each time when feeding - that could well be internal thrush.

Don,t come here for BF adivice, Kelly mum, le leche league, Breastfeeding network are all goodd options. Associaiton of breast feeding mums.