Nursing and biting

[LittlePetal82]

Has anyone had to stop nursing because of biting? My DS has recently got his first tooth. For the last couple of days, he's been refusing to nurse and when I try to get him to latch on he just ends up pulling off and biting me at the same time and it's very painful. Up until now he hasn't taken a bottle but now I've managed to get him to have 2 ozs from a bottle so he clearly does want milk, just not from me. He's eating solids well in the day but he's waking a lot at night and I think it might be because he's not getting enough milk in the day. Anyone else had this experience and did you give up BF or was it just a phase. I feel like I'm not ready to give up BF yet but I can't force him to feed from me.

Yes DD went through this when teething. It only lasted a few days then she went back. Also when her teeth were coming through it felt very “bitey” until she had adjusted the position of her bite

You can get past it but you have to be quite on the ball. As soon as you feel the latch change, take them off, or use your finger to just break the latch and swiftly remove your nipple.
If you get bitten, say no firmly, but don't scare your baby and stop the feed.
They do learn quite quickly that biting ends the feed.

Problem is that when I try to nurse him in the day he's just not interested so I'm worried he's just not getting enough milk. Stopping the feed because of biting doesn't really work as he seems to do it when he doesn't want to feed. He does need the milk though as he's waking in the night for it. Last night he was awake regularly and for long periods until about 4am. At 4am I eventually got him to nurse and then he slept for 3 hours. I'm getting apprehensive about nursing now though as his biting hurts so much.

When he bites don't pull back, pull him into you so his nose is smothered. He should let go and pull back.
If you don't react then he should stop.

Don't have any reassurances, OP, but posting in solidarity. My DS has 4 teeth now and biting is sadly fairly regular and occasionally incredibly painful causing me to yelp out which scares him, makes him cry, and he's then really apprehensive latching back on again which means a poor latch and more tooth contact.

I've not been able to really work out a pattern or reason why he does it, other than sometimes when he's a bit over excited. He's also been messing around with his tippy cup of water at meals and holding that in his teeth and shaking his head about so I wonder if he's attempting the same thing with me...

I'm really hoping he'll stop doing it as I'm not ready to stop yet, even though he's almost 11 months (it's the only way to get him to sleep!) but not sure what I can do to get him to stop. He's totally rejecting bottles of expressed milk so I can't try switching to that so I don't sit in fear for half an hour 3 times a day!!

I know it's not going to be what you want to hear, but just but thankful that at the moment there's only the 1 tooth - I know their hard gums give a good bite, but when it's tooth top and bottom it's really something else...

@marvelousmadmadammim

When he bites don't pull back, pull him into you so his nose is smothered. He should let go and pull back. If you don't react then he should stop.

This is the advice I had too. Pull baby towards you.

Mine went through a phase of doing this. I agree it often indicated a lack of interest in feeding, and I just put him down and said in a fairly non-committal tone “no biting, we don’t bite” (having seen suggestions to keep it low-key). I’m sorry to say it lasted a few weeks rather than days but he then just suddenly stopped.

Thanks all.

Yes, I am wondering if he is doing it because he's cutting another tooth and I'm not looking forward to there being a second tooth to contend with!

So DS is now refusing to nurse completely, the last time he did so was on Christmas Day and even that was only briefly. Has anyone experienced this and then successfully restarted BF? I'm just really sad that this could be the end of BF as it really feels like he won't go back to it. I have no idea why he's refusing milk.

He's probably getting the same tooth on the other side. Try calpol or teething gel or a frozen teething ring before breastfeeding.

How's his fluid intake apart from the lack of nursing? Is he drinking water in the day, or taking any more from the bottle? I think you'd only need to be concerned if he's suddenly not taking in much liquid or the amount passing through is less than half his usual amount (that's what we were advised when we had to get our DS checked out when he stopped eating and drinking due to tonsillitis)