Breastfeeding pain

[brummiemumm]

Hi all. My little girl is 4 weeks old and I have been breastfeeding, with some expressing for bottles (although we've only done this about half a dozen times when I've been exhausted so hubby can do a night feed!) and I have been experiencing pain when I feed - sometimes worse than others, some times it is excruciating, others much more bearable and we are driving ourselves mad trying to figure out what is causing the pain.
We had our daughters tongue tie snipped on Thursday, and on the same day the feeds seemed much better but things have gone back to being painful again today. I've tried and tried to get the latch correct and with no face-to-face support still don't know if it's correct. I've tried expressing some milk off to start with and this did seem to help sometimes. What I want to ask now though is I get pains which come and go IN BETWEEN feeds as well now, like stabbing pains deep in my breast which build then fade and my nipples do tend to go whiteish on the ends when this happens. I've been panicking that it's thrush but the pain isn't constant, it's random and comes and goes lasting for about 10-15 seconds. Can anyone offer an explanation?

Hello, it does sound like thrush to me, I had it fairly recently and it is painful! So you have my sympathy. You might need treatment from the GP, especially as baby is so young (if it is thrush you both need to be treated).
Hope you get it sorted quickly and congratulations on your arrival

Agree that definitely sounds like thrush, get on to your GP. Are you still under the midwives? They should be able to give face to face support for your latch. Otherwise is there a local La Leche/ABM group in your area? They may be doing video consults.
Finally it's very possible that it's because of nipple damage caused by a bad latch before TT division - if so, Multi mam compresses are magic for repairing nipple damage.

Is it one or both breasts? Do you have any lumps/red patches on the skin in either? Blocked ducts can cause pain and turn into mastitis, for which you'll need antibiotics, so always worth checking. Lots of info online on how to clear them if that's the issue (the KellyMom website is a great breastfeeding resource)

Thrush is really commonly misdiagnosed as a cause of nipple pain when feeding. It's often more to do with latching and attachment.
Lots of infant feeding teams and IBCLCs are doing video sessions - worth investigating, because it's really difficult to fix whatever's going on by yourself.
This is a really useful sheet to help identify what is going on for you:
http://www.breastfeedingnetwork.org.uk/wp-content/pdfs/DifferentialDiagnosisofNipplePainMarch2009.pdf

Hi brummiemumm, I created an account here just to answer this because I have had exactly this problem and had it diagnosed and very effectively treated! Sounds to me like you definitely are suffering from Raynaud's Phenomenon of the nipple. I had exactly the same symptoms you're describing--just like with you, it was sometimes excruciating and sometimes just slightly painful, but when really bad it was truly agonising. Shooting pains in the breasts between feeds, blanching of the nipple, etc. In this time when it's very hard to see a healthcare professional in person it's difficult to sort out whether you have thrush, latching problems, or Raynaud's (though nipple blanching is a pretty clear indicator), but I could be fairly certain what it was in my case because I had actually experienced it for a few weeks during late pregnancy and figured it out then; it came back around week 4 of breastfeeding when it was much worse than during pregnancy. I got some guidance on it from our local breastfeeding support workers via phone and email consultations and, more importantly, got put on medication, Nifedipine, which has basically fixed the problem (I still have some very mild pain sometimes, at week 9 of breastfeeding, on a low dose of the medication).

The breastfeeding support worker sent me this page, which discusses Nifedipine: www.breastfeedingnetwork.org.uk/raynauds/
I was worried about getting a prescription from a GP over the phone, but they were happy to give one right away and to trust my descriptions of the symptoms, especially as I could say I'd spoken to bf support workers. The bf support people recommended medication right away when I told them the pain I was in, no suggesting I try ginger supplements or improving the latch first, which was a relief as I was desperate for help and didn't want to be told to just endure it or work on fixing my technique. I really hope that you can get some help with it right away if this is what you have as I know how utterly agonising these symptoms can be!