Breastfeeding

I am feeling so deflated at the moment with breastfeeding… I am 3 weeks pp on Monday and been breastfeeding since the beginning. Had some problems with tongue tie which resulted in my nipples being very sore and cracked so moved onto pumping to let them heal. His tongue tie has now been sorted so been trying to latch him back on my boobs and his latch is so much better but having him on my boobs more has caused my nipples to become sore again as they have not fully healed from all the pumping. I have tried everything, nipple cream and silver shields. I am at a lost and not sure what to do!

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I promise you this is just part of the process and it will get easier as your nipples get used to it and less cluster feeding. The first 4 weeks were hell for me with sore cracked nipples, especially with the cluster feeding as well but from around 8 weeks onwards, it’s been so wonderful and I truly love it now (my baby is 4.5 months).

With the silver nipple shields, are you wearing them religiously (other than the short time of cleaning them) and on the bare nipple (without any nipple cream)? I made the mistake of putting nipple cream and then the shields on but it just acted as a barrier and prevented the silver from getting through to actually heal the nipples. Once I started only using the silver nipple shields on their own, after about 12 hours of wearing them each time, my nipples felt soooo much less sore

3 weeks pp was the hardest for me starting out breastfeeding, I wanted to quit every.single.day.

The one thing that saved me was the medela nipple shields (where you put them on your nipple and baby can drink through them). They work short term to give your nipples a chance to heal and baby can still latch, they’re a bit annoying I won’t lie, but wayy better than being almost in tears with every feed.

Make sure you also put a bit of milk you’ve pumped on your nipples and give them air - try do this a few times a day. And as the lady above said, keep the silver shields on all the time when you’re wearing a bra so that there’s no friction/rubbing.

You’ve got this! Something just clicked at 6 weeks pp and I’ve loved breastfeeding since❤️ I’m so glad I didn’t give up.

Weeks 3-6 I’d say were the hardest for me. I’m now a year and a bit down the line and still going strong. If you can, reach out to your local breastfeeding support group, most areas will have them (your health visitor can help signpost you). They can do a feeding assessment and offer peer support too.
Airing the nipples can help too. I also found that nipple cream didn’t work very well but breast milk or coconut oil did wonders.
With the silver cups like others have said try to make sure you’re not using the cream with them as the silver in direct contact is what’s going to help.
Sending strength and reassurance - it gets better!x

Has anyone help to show you how to do a proper latch, mine hurt so bad until a health visitor basically showed me how to do it.
Mine was basically only a week old at the time, so not bad for very long.
But it was an aha moment.

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