Question...

armywife8808 · #1 February 7th, 2012, 01:03 PM

Hi all, I am a first time mom and therefore first time breastfeeder. My son is 16 days old today. We had a couple of issues getting the hang of BFing early on and we sought out help from a LC but it has been going very well for probably a week and a half. But the past few days something new has come up. When he does his long draws as he nurses, most of the time he breaks the seal on his latch. It doesn't affect him, he continues right on nursing. But it hurts me. So my question is, will he figure this out? Should we get back with a LC? Is there something I can do?

mgm78 · #2 February 7th, 2012, 03:41 PM

hmmmm. so while he is nursing, he breaks the latch and then relatches shallowly causing pain? have you tried slightly different positions to nurse in (cradle vs football, etc). Can you pull him completely off and make him relatch fresh?

armywife8808 · #3 February 7th, 2012, 07:08 PM

It's hard to explain. What will happen is: he will do a long draw/suck and I will hear the "click" sound of him breaking the latch. He will latch right back on, usually not shallow. What hurts is that right after the "click" it feels like my nipple is being flicked hard... *ouch*! But the pain goes right back away when he latches again. If he does latch shallow I do pull him off and start over fresh. I hope that makes some sense?

We do the cross-cradle position. We tried football hold early on but it didn't work well for us at that point, I will have to try it again.

mgm78 · #4 February 8th, 2012, 05:24 AM

ah, gotcha, it sounds like when he breaks the latch he is hurting you. why is he breaking the latch? to get a breath? during let down (is it too forceful)? stuffy nose?

angelsailor288 · #5 February 8th, 2012, 05:01 PM

My son constantly breaks latch ugh.. still hurts but its to the point it doesnt bother me anymore lol. Hope someone has a suggestion for you. hang in there! It gets easier

Doodlebug06 · #6 February 8th, 2012, 06:53 PM

Dd was doing that at first in the hospital and it ended up I got my skin on my nipple stripped after so many times. I've got no advice since she's 3 weeks now and I'm just now starting back to bf'ing using a shield.
All I can say is I wish I hadn't given in and used bottles to bf her when the latch was so bad ! It's taken me 3 weeks of work to get to bf.

lunarmagic · #7 February 9th, 2012, 09:23 PM

Kate did that for a long while... because apparently I had a very fast flow and she was gasping air to compensate for it. (It also caused her gas!) She would also do that when she was congested. Do you have a forceful let down? If he pulls off while nursing do you leak/spray a lot?

As to whether or not it will resolve itself, it really depends on the reason it's happening. If it's a learning-to-latch-and-nurse-correctly thing then he'll probably get the hang of it soon. If he's doing it for some other reason then it probably won't change until the cause is figured out. It couldn't hurt to see an LC about it.