When does breastfeeding stop hurting?

[blondie887]

My baby is nearly 3 weeks old and I have been part breastfeeding him ( I always planned to use some formula so partner can do some feeds). Currently around a third of his food is breast milk.

I'm still finding it really painful though. Ive had the latch checked lots of times and it's not that. I think it's just how hard he has to suck. I certainly never have any trouble with leaking boobs, in fact I really have to squeeze to get any to come out at all, so I think I'm just really hard work for him, hence the ferocious sucking.

Is it likely to get easier/less painful? I'm sticking with it in the hope that it will but if it's likely to continue to hurt this much as long as I carry on I think I'll just drop it altogether

Hold on in my experience and many of my friends it takes about a month and I promise you the pain lessens so that definitely by six weeks I felt no pain just pure joy that I was feeding my baby and I was so proud of myself that feeling lasts far longer than the initial pain of breastfeeding. BTW I fed both for 4 years in total. Just hang on if you can.

Yes! Hang in there. You could have slammed my nipples in a car door after two years and I wouldn’t have noticed.

Do you know what it is that makes it hurt less? Are my nipples just going to toughen up or is it that the baby's mouth gets bigger?

What/where is the pain? Does it hurt through the whole feed?

I suffered in the first weeks due to bad latch which caused blisters and sores, these took 6wks and 7wks to heal, I would rest it if very bad and pump that one and feed from the other, then when I could feed on it I would use lansinoh nipple cream to keep them moist until healed. I was also given jelinet dressing from the midwife but didn't end up using it but have seen online people like it. I wanted to try nipple shields but couldn't get a size that fit. 9wks ebf and all going well now.

Stop trying to do mixed feeding until breastfeeding is properly established. Feeding shouldn't hurt if the baby is latched on properly, but what you say about him sucking hard because your milk is not plentiful suggests you need to feed more, which will mean you produce more milk.

I'm pretty sure most people find it terribly painful to begin with, so don't worry that you're doing anything wrong if the latch is good and you're not alone. When my little boy was a newborn it was really painful, he was just very aggressive and the moment he got anywhere near my nipple he would just chomp, it does take the baby a while to learn how to feed 'nicely'. Are you using nipple cream? That took a lot of the pain away for me. The first few weeks does feel like an endless cycle of pain and constant feeding, and the constant feeding doesn't exactly give your nipples time to heal. What I will say is that it does get A LOT easier after the first few weeks. Eventually the baby learns to suckle more efficiently so feeds are shorter and feeding should stop being painful. My little boy is 7 and a half months now and feeding is so straight forward now I often ask myself why I ever found it so hard, but honestly the first weeks are difficult and relentless and you're not alone, hang in there

@DietrichandDiMaggio

Stop trying to do mixed feeding until breastfeeding is properly established. Feeding shouldn't hurt if the baby is latched on properly, but what you say about him sucking hard because your milk is not plentiful suggests you need to feed more, which will mean you produce more milk.

I had planned to exclusively breastfeed but he wasn't getting enough food at the beginning and was poorly so midwives advised me to add formula top ups. I'm aware that using formula will be limiting my supply but I'm not willing to let him go hungry while I try to up it.

I'm pumping every 3 hours to try to increase things but never get more than 50mls in a pump session

If you are on Facebook have a look on breastfeeding groups, they offer admin support and have a wealth of information. Lots of skin to skin and offering the breast a lot helps up your supply, especially as they cluster feed. They also say that what you express doesn't indicate how much milk you have.

The fastest way to increase your supply is to cut out the formula. Feeding is far, far more effective than pumping and your milk supply will increase very quickly. You don’t need to worry about him getting enough, he will just keep going or feed more until he gets his fill. This is why newborns cluster feed - to establish supply.
I found it hurt like hell for six weeks but by eight weeks it was fine. Then I carried on for 15 months, both babies. Hang in there. It will get better and it is amazing.

Btw, I could never pump a drop and both my babies were EBF for six months so don’t go by what your expressing as a sign of supply.

The pain should be gone by 6 weeks, and lessen significantly between 4 and 6 weeks. If one of your nipples gets really sore you can just pump on that side for 12ish hours. I really recommend mother love nipple butter directly after every feeding, it doesn't need to be wiped off before she feeds again!

I hate to say it, but it never hurt me. I applied pure lanolin to my nipples for a month before my baby was born

Top ups are a crappy idea in most cases. If baby isn't getting enough milk and latch seems ok then you need a proper tongue tie assessment. Not from a midwife or a GP or hv it has to be from a qualified lactation consultant. Midwives and hvs often say "no tie from what I can see" and sound convincing but they are blagging it and have no idea. Get a proper assessment.

But overall your nipples get used to it and it will die down.

Use lanisoh but do check for lanolin allergies because if you're allergic to it then you don't want it near your nips!

Oh and don't confuse cluster feeding for hunger. They aren't starving they are increasing your supply.

If you have plenty of wet and dirty nappies and weight is ok then they are getting plenty. If lots of wet and dirty nappies and weight isn't ok then consider an allergy.

For those who are saying it hurt like hell, how did you manage to keep going? I found that each feed hurt like hell too for the first few minutes each time (I am going back years, mine aren’t little anymore) and it was just too much each and every time to keep going. I just couldn’t put myself through it after a long and difficult labour and EMCS each time.

Just come on to say the same as Santa^^ Get yourself a lactation consultant to do a tongue tie assessment. Both my babies have been tongue tied, and it was agony breastfeeding till I had the tie cut. If you google tongue tie practitioners I think you can find a list. Good luck.

It hurt like hell for the first three weeks. Not my nipples though, it was right inside. I think it was the let down mechanism, rusty from lack of use! Then one day it didn’t hurt, it actually felt quite nice. Fed DD1 until she was 1 and DD2 until 18 months.

Get some nipple shields. I would have given up breastfeeding without them, it was so painful at first. After a while I no longer needed them but they really helped at the beginning.

When you get a good latch. Watch loads of YouTube videos on breastfeeding and latching

Unfortunately, it never stopped hurting with me, but then both mine were tongue tied (and the tongue tie snip failed). They were essentially chewing my nipples rather than feeding. I now have scar tissue where my left nipple used to be - why I didn't stop earlier is beyond me.

Yes tongue tie snips can grow back. I had my DC done five times between them!

@WellTidy I just had to, my DC have allergies so wouldn't have been able to have formula. I didn't have a choice. I used shields for few weeks with dc1 until the tie was cut. I also knew with dc2 (when feeds were most painful) that I'd done it before and I knew it would get better eventually assuming I could get a tongue tie assessment.

The 'flipple' is a good technique for latch

With my first I was in agony for 8 weeks, it was really awful. I asked every midwife/health visitor I met for help and went to two different breastfeeding support groups near me and everyone told me his latch was good when they looked at him feeding. It felt so frustrating that they would all tell me it shouldn’t hurt but then would say there was nothing wrong….I just thought well if his latch is so good why is it so painful then?!?! However, I finally self referred to a lactation consultant in our NHS trust (at about 8 weeks) and she asked to watch him latching on and immediately said his latch was a few millimetres off and he kept hitting the same bruises& blisters I’d got in the first couple of weeks which meant they could never heal, she said I probably had some nerve damage. She said many midwives and health visitors don’t actually watch the baby go on, they just look at them feeding to assess the latch but that can be misleading. Once she showed me how to correct his latch it improved within days and we never looked back, I fed him til 15months with no further issues. Fast forward to DD2 who was born 6 weeks ago, her latch seemed quite shallow in those first few days and I was starting to get blisters…. I booked myself in with a lactation consultant when she was 5 days old and she advised me to put baby on her tummy on top of my tummy and let her ‘crawl’ her way up towards the nipple herself as they have the instinct to do at that early stage. It immediately felt much less painful and by persevering with that approach as well as using Multimam compresses on my sore nipples the pain disappeared within a couple of days just as the consultant said it would!!! I haven’t even needed to use Lansinoh or anything since early in that second week, a completely different experience to first time round!! I would always recommend to anyone struggling to see an expert as they can check for tongue tie and have a really good look at the feeding process to assess what the issue actually is. In my case it was such a simple fix that transformed everything!

There are some good resources online but if you can find a local group. I found out infant feed coordinator really useful. A lot of midwives and health visitors aren't specialists, so bad advice is given. I found the milk meg on Facebook really useful to look at, she's got a post on upping your supply.

As some have said I really think it would be worth seeing a breastfeeding consultant (not a midwife or HV) - you usually have to pay for these unfortunately but get assessed for tongue tie and have them look at the latch. I have bf both of mine (1st til age 2 and still going with my 9 month old) and the only time it has hurt is in the very early days at the let down (so not for the whole feed) and when I had mastitis. I don't think it should be hurting the way it is, please continue to seek help. Good luck!