Breastfeeding encouragement
I know I could post this to other subs but I really enjoy the community on here and hoping to get some encouragement with my breastfeeding journey.
To start: Baby is 5.5 weeks and weight gain is not a concern. He regained birth weight in a week and between his 2 week and 1 month appointment he put on 2 full pounds. Every day we can see he’s growing chunkier lol
But from the beginning, breastfeeding has been so hard. In the hospital, I used nipple shields at the direction of the LCs to help him latch because I was engorged by day 2 and my nipples are kind of flat already. The shields were great but annoying to use each time and I knew I should ween off of the them.
I had an outside IBCLC come do a home visit the week we got home. We practiced taking the shields off and getting him to latch. All seemed well and I knew my nipples needed to “toughen up” so I pushed through until week 3. Put the shields back on a few feeds and pumped instead of nursing a few times for a week because my nipples just hurt. Everyone told me it’ll get better, my nipples need time, but things feel like they are getting worse not better. My letdown is fast so he is latching/unlatching a ton during a feed and it’s painful each time.
By week 4, I realize it’s not getting better. I make a virtual appointment and we agree it’s his latch. We talk through strategies/positioning to get him to latch better. He’s just chomping down on my nipples each time. The fast letdown doesn’t help. Some feeds he can latch fine and settle on the boob but others are torture and we both end up really frustrated. The good sessions are getting fewer and farther between. Even when he latches well at first, I can literally feel him slide back and onto the nipple directly. My nipples turn white and throb after most sessions.
It’s now week 5 and I’m dreading every single feed. I am crying when he won’t latch well and just now, probably tried to relatch him 25 times correctly before I switched boobs and just let him chomp down so at least he was fed. He was so frustrated and so was I.
I have an appointment with a new lactation group this afternoon that has pediatric OTs and feeding specialists amongst the IBCLCs and at first I was really hopeful but after that last feed i’m not sure I feel hopeful anymore.
I know they’ll check him for oral ties again and we’ll continue to work on positioning but I really just don’t want to be in pain. It makes me so sad to think about going to exclusive pumping but what if that’s my only option?
Has anyone else had a rough start to their BF journey but got support and it got better after 6+ weeks? I worry that at this point his muscle memory is just for a poor latch and it’s too late to salvage the breastfeeding journey.