Breastfeeding and teething help

[EatCakeBeMerry]

I'm breastfeeding my 1 year old who is currently teething and I'm in agony! For the first time my skin is split and they feel so bruised. It's making me hate breastfeeding and my patience is wearing very thin! He also scratches at my neck or digs around my collar bone so the whole experience is pretty miserable for me right now! I feel like all I do is give him Calpol or anbesol and count down the hours dreading the next feed.

I think he is pushing my nipple to the side once in his mouth and is grinding them on his new molars. I'm having to hold him really firmly to stop him pulling back or to the side causing the pain. He is up almost hourly and had been for weeks on end and I'm just at my wits end

I’m so sorry, that sounds miserable. I don’t have any words of wisdom, but solidarity as for me breast-feeding has never stopped being really painful and now my nearly-1 yr old scratches, pinches, pulls my lip etc throughout feeds and i often feel beaten up by the end. I wear a silicone teething necklace that sometimes distracts her by giving her something to fiddle with.

I am in the process of dropping her pre-nap feeds and over the next few weeks will also phase out the getting-up and finally bedtime feeds and wean completely. Definitely cannot go on like this indefinitely. However i realise this solution isn’t for everyone and well done for getting through a tough period. Hopefully the teething will calm down soon and he’ll adjust to the new feelings without mauling you.

When my dd starting to bite I would immediately take off and not put her back on for a good ten minutes. She used to cry but eventually she stopped biting. My midewife showed me how to take her off by using my finger to open the mouth, really can't explain it. Also, if I felt a change in latch she came off straight away, I read somewhere they can't latch to feed and bite at the same time, it's a different jaw movement.

When my DD started biting at 12 months she went on the bottle !

My 14 month old is the same, although likes pulling hair during feeds and it's agony, he pulls and pulls no matter how many times you tell him to stop. He screams and then his hands go straight to the nape of my neck to pull more. In the.night I'll be asleep and suddenly have a hand wrench a ton of hair out of my head. My DD used to pinch my chest and it did stop and Ds seems worse around teething so all I can suggest is to unlatch and correct and know it does end eventually! I have anbesol on hand which tends to calm him.

Ah my 11 month old is the same, I have three holes around my nipple (where it meets my boob) where she rests her teeth when she's feeding. It's insanely painful and is making me hate feeding as well, to the point where I'm counting down the days until I can switch her onto cow's milk but I have underlying sorrow that that's the case and I really don't want to. But I can't keep crying out in pain when she's feeding as that also distresses her.

I'm sorry, I have no solution. The only thing I've done is feed cross body until she works her way through the skin at one area, and then switch and feed rugby hold until she's done it again... and then switch back and hope the first wound has healed.
Savlon before bed and after morning feed too.

And this evening I held her really quite tight to me as she's also started pulling back from my boob when she's feeding whilst still fully matched in and that DOES NOT help. That made it slightly better. And then she also kind of squeezes/ kneads my boob as well. Christ the whole thing is just painful.
And all this only on my right boob - my left boob is just fine!

Can I put anbesol on my boob to numb it a bit as well?!

Matched in = latched on

I had been finding cross cradle more uncomfortable as I dont think she was latching properly and I could feel teeth - now she's big enough to sit in my lap and feed upright it is really nice again. I had been counting down the days to dropping feeds and felt awful about it but now I feel like we're in sync again. Maybe keep trying different positions? Fingers crossed you find something that works for you both

Omg the pain of feeding, I have such sympathy! I used Lanisoh this morning for the first time since he was tiny, as the pain is quite significant and he hasn’t even broken the skin yet! It's just the constant abrasion of his incisors 😫😫 I’m just powering through atm but it is making me quite irritable! (With poor DH, not DS)

Thank you all! It's comforting to know I'm not alone although I feel for anyone going through similar as it has just been miserable!

I will be testing out new positions (this is probably long over due as I find cradle hold so uncomfy now he is quite big). I've been checking latch a lot more since I posted and trying to get him to open wide as I think just "flopping them out" for him has led to a sloppy latch and its only now more teeth are on route I've noticed!

I'm looking forward to the day the digging round my neck stops but dread to think what he will do instead!