Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

Please or to access all these features

Pregnancy

Talk about every stage of pregnancy, from early symptoms to preparing for birth.

How do I prepare for breastfeeding?

29 replies

CanIHaveAHolidayPlease · 11/04/2021 13:35

Long story short, I'm 11 weeks pregnant with my 3rd. Have two completely failed attempts at breastfeeding with my first two children. First one I managed 2 possibly 3 feeds and second child I think 3 days!

I've never been offered any antenatal classes so naievly assumed BF would be as simple as latching baby on and boom.... how wrong was I!!!
With my first child we were kept in hospital for 24 hours due to him not feeding but no-one had time to help me. It was painful! Midwife said the latch was wrong but he was on and off the breast every 5 mins so couldn't keep calling for help as often as needed!! The cheeky cow even told me id mangage i to BF if I'd given birth on a desert island as I'd have no choice!
I ended up giving him a bottle just to get out of there, going home and getting mastitis.

Second child, again painful. This time excruciating. He'd grip my nipple so hard my whole body would tense up and I'd burst into tears 😢 gave up after three days because I ended up being scared of going near the moses basket incase he woke up and wanted milk.

What am I doing wrong?? Apparently its not supposed to hurt if you get the latch right.
My boobs have never leaked a single drip whilst pregnant but are extremely tender, is there something wrong with me?

As I said I am 11 weeks pregnant with my 3rd. Its been 9 years since my last child so feel like a first time parent again! I am desperate to manage it this time.

Is there something im supposed to do to prepare? Are my boobs just useless?
Maybe someone could recommend a good book?

Thanks for reading, sorry it's long!!

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
MabelPines · 11/04/2021 17:38

Spend a fortune on pointless breastfeeding cookies. Apparently.

Tomatobear · 11/04/2021 18:40

Sorry I should add that I'm pretty sure my son has a tongue tie- I'm sure I've seen it! But nobody ever noticed one. I think that's why it hurt me for so long for me. He feeds just fine though.

IvanTheDragon · 11/04/2021 18:57

The hospital gave me a copy of this booklet and it was our bible for the first few weeks - not judgy, offers lots of options and lots of photos (mum’s eye view of various feeding positions, what nappies should look like as their intake changes etc).

I second what other people have said about the initial pain (let down pain I think it’s called) - my partner used to count to twenty for me while I did my birthing breathing when baby latched on, and it would have stopped hurting by the time he got to 20 - if it hadn’t, the latch was wrong. After a month I had no pain at all on let down. Lansinoh was also brilliant in that first few days.

I found expressing colostrum in those last few weeks of pregnancy helped improve my confidence and get me familiar with how my boobs worked, and I produced a fair amount so my partner could give me a few more minutes sleep by giving it to my daughter in the first few days too.

IvanTheDragon · 11/04/2021 18:59

Ooops, didn’t post the link to the booklet - here it is realbabymilk.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Essential-Guide-Generic-2020.pdf

New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.

This thread is closed and is no longer accepting replies. Click here to start a new thread.