Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Dec
13
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“Motherhood Hurts…”
“Motherhood hurts, baby is getting what she needs so just deal with it, hopefully it will go away when she gets older – Lactation Consultant to mother suffering continuing severe pain while breastfeeding with no obvious cause.
There are 22 comments to this post.
Sigh. I heard this so many times myself. Mostly from people from the local La Leche League. Gross. I hope this Mom didn’t give up and found someone who was willing to look for a solution. So unfair to her!
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Tara Reply:
December 13th, 2011 at 9:24 pm (Quote)
Really?! From leaders or other mothers attending the meetings? I’ve never heard that from a LLL leader, and I know several! Sorry you had that experience. :0(
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Lisa Reply:
December 13th, 2011 at 9:44 pm (Quote)
LLL was a godsend for me when I had my breast feeding issues. They’re the ones that always say that breast feeding shouldn’t hurt, so if it does, something needs to be fixed. I was lucky to have them, an IBCLC and a breast feeding support group to help me with all the problems I had.
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WellBegun Reply:
December 13th, 2011 at 10:06 pm (Quote)
How awful! I’m so sorry to hear that. I am a LLL leader, and neither I nor any leader I know would say this – we would be persistent in looking for a solution with a mother. I know there are some less than stellar leaders out there, and if you heard that from a leader, that is so sad. If you heard it from another group mom, I hope you were able to follow LLL’s advice to “take what works for you and leave the rest behind.”
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Mama Wrench Reply:
December 14th, 2011 at 1:43 am (Quote)
On the one hand I agree that it’s a myth that “breastfeeding never hurts” (it hurt for us for a LONG time even after we fixed his latch) that doesn’t mean they should’ve dismissed your complaints or not made sure everything was going exactly right before saying BFing hurts, get used to it 
Sorry you went through that. I wonder how many mothers just get discouraged and quit after listening to them.
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Lexie Reply:
December 14th, 2011 at 2:56 am (Quote)
It’s one of the reasons I refuse to get involved in the LLL when this baby is born. My niece was born several years ago at 32W with various problems one of which was a breathing issue so it made it very hard for her to nurse on one side. Between her medical issues and other reasons my friends supply never came in properly but rather then reassure her that this was normal and suggest that she consider supplementing her LLL group convinced her that if she couldn’t EBF her baby she was a failure as a mother.
That’s not what I want to deal with if I have problems with BF.
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Lisa Reply:
December 14th, 2011 at 5:50 am (Quote)
I have never heard this from LLL before. I’ve been to meetings where I’ve formula fed and other’s have formula fed while we were trying to get breast feeding on track and they never made us feel like failures. I’d say try different groups if one makes you feel uncomfortable. They should be there for support, not to make you feel bad.
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Knitted in the Womb had this to say,
Dec 13, 2011 @ 7:30 pm (Quote)
Uuugggghhh! I hate this. With my first I dealt with excruciating pain for 6 weeks because I was told that “fair skinned people experience pain.” I had the pain again with my second, but it didn’t last so long. Before my third was born I learned a bit more about latch, and realized that my babies weren’t latching properly! If your baby gets a “nursing blister,” your baby is not properly flaring out his top lip. Once I learned that, and learned that all I needed to do was use my pinky finger to pull that top lip out…I had a pain free nursing experience with 3rd newborn (okay, I did have some left over pregnancy sensitivity briefly…but it was NOTHING compared to what I’d dealt with before).
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Robyn Reply:
December 14th, 2011 at 12:58 pm (Quote)
Never heard that about the nursing blister and I don’t think that’s quite accurate. So far, the only nursing issue that has caused painful nipples for me is thrush and both of my babies had the “nursing blister”.
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Knitted in the Womb Reply:
December 14th, 2011 at 4:40 pm (Quote)
For a proper latch, the baby’s lips are supposed to be flared out. If they are flared out, the part of the lip where a nursing blister forms is not in contact with the breast…thus there is no friction going on to form a blister.
Not all women will feel pain with this particular form of incorrect latch, but for those that do have pain as the baby latches on, and whose baby has a nursing blister, pulling out that top lip can work miracles.
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So, Mama, did you figure out what it was? I put up with pain for “no identifiable reason” for almost 6 months before a new lactation consultant identified a posterior tongue tie (which I had diagnosed at 1 week, but I’d been told by pediatrician and lactation consultant that I was wrong). Treated that, pain is gone.
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This was another one of mine (slightly different wording, if this is actually someone elses almost identical experience feel free to pink despite me! Otherwise I’ll assume the site manager altered it to make it more concise). After the awful birthing experience I had already, I wasn’t ready to find out that this was what they meant when they said ’98% of women can breastfeed’.
I started with issues, because baby never fed properly in the first few days and by the time I got help baby was frustrated and would begin screaming after a minute of trying. We got baby feeding, but I began feeling incredible pain to the point that I would find myself crying when she woke up because I would have to feed her again. I understood normal start of breastfeeding pain and this wasn’t it.
The pain was like a graze, and if I skipped a feed the next feed was less painful, but it got worse again after that. The pain would be sharp to begin with, then disapear mostly for the first 10 minutes, then come back and get worse and worse.
I saw a LC who, after assuring me the latch was perfect and baby was eating, and telling me I had no marks or visible issues on the nipple, came out with this and said maybe I was just sensitive.
I called the ABA hotline (Australian version of the LLL with a helpline for volunteer mothers answering questions) and after describing the situation was basically told the same thing but told I should see a LC in case I did, in fact, have an incorrect latch.
I saw another LC who watched me feed, said the latch was perfect and my nipples looked fine and said there was nothing she could do. I asked both LCs if she could be toungue tied and they said no.
I was not bonding with my baby, I dreaded feed times and under doctors orders was pumping constantly as well because my supply wasn’t increasing and I was having to pump to bottle every hour or two and supplement formula for the rest of it, feeding her every 3 to 4 hours from first the breast, then the expelled milk, then formula (she didn’t want to feed more often than that, I was feeding on demand but she wasn’t demanding, I had to make her eat). I decided my relationship with my baby was more important than what milk she drank, and switched to full bottle feeding. As much as I would have loved to breastfeed I don’t regret the decision, only the lack of knowlege I had to fix the problem.
A week or two later we put our finger in her mouth one day to suck on and realised as she was sucking she was running her tongue up and down along it. I remembered that I had described the pain like a graze, but was dismissed when they said they saw no graze. But the sensation on my finger was the same sort of sensitive graze as I felt on my nipples, except less painful of course. When she started solids we noticed she never had that expelling with the tongue reflex that most babies have before they’re ready for solids which I was told had something to do with tongue placement in breastfeeding and it was the same reflex. So we established the problem, most likely, was that she was running her tongue over my nipple as she fed, grazing a very sensitive area every few hours. I found 2 other women a few weeks later whos babies did the same thing, one baby stopped on it’s own at a month old, the other 2 babies did it their entire breastfeeding lives. I wish I’d known those women before my baby was born.
You know what upsets me the most about the whole situation? I could have used nipple guards. That’s all I needed, sure there might have been other ways to fix the problem more permenantly, but in the short term all I needed was nipple guards. And I was told over and over and over again that I couldn’t use them, they’d ruin my supply, you don’t need them if you’re doing it right. I could have breastfed my baby if these LCs didn’t have an agenda to push. My later research says that nipple guards are still a better option than formula, but unfortunately, I didn’t know any better and while I didn’t trust doctors, I did trust LCs and ABA leaders.
At least I won’t be afraid to try them next time. Maybe I will be able to breastfeed next time around. But I’m pretty sure I’ll be figuring it out on my own, after 3 women belittled me and my problem, I wouldn’t know who to go to next time.
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Melissa Reply:
December 14th, 2011 at 9:35 am (Quote)
That is awful. I am so sorry so many “professionals” felt that it was okay to dismiss a mother’s repeated requests for help and strong statement that it HURT. Pain like that is not okay, even if baby IS getting milk. Mom counts, too.
They were wrong to act the way they did. I am so sorry you had to deal with that. I’m glad you figured out the problem, and glad you identified a solution for possible use next time. I hope you take some satisfaction in those two facts. Moms are smart…and you, Emily, are amazing. Your baby is lucky to have you for a mom.
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Jen Reply:
December 14th, 2011 at 3:15 pm (Quote)
I’m so sorry you were treated like that by so-called professionals. In my area, nipple shields are handed out like candy, and I’ve grown to distrust their use. But they CAN be a useful tool in very unique situations, and it sounds like yours is one of them.
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What about checking for internal thrush, tongue tie, or Reynaud’s Syndrome in the mother?
What about offering nipple cream in case the pain was due to normal chafing that needed time to heal?
Breastfeeding is not supposed to cause toe-curling pain for an extended period of time. Occasionally it might, but there’s usually SOMEthing else going on, even if the cause hasn’t been discovered yet.
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My let down was horribly painful for months. It was like someone was kneading my breasts like bread dough AND driving a steam roller over them at the same time for a good five minutes solid.
It eventually lessened as my supply dwindled due to an auto-immune condition. I wondered that if I could have nursed my son, and not solely pumped, if the pain would have been a constant thing until he weaned. I guess I’ll find out with the next one in a few years.
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If breastfeeding hurts, maybe don’t do it. Formula won’t kill the baby.
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Michelle Potter Reply:
December 19th, 2011 at 1:25 pm (Quote)
Of course formula won’t kill the baby. Breastfeeding is preferable, but formula is a perfectly good alternative.
However, that is completely beside the point. When someone is trying to accomplish something, and having a problem, and it is your JOB to help them, it’s just wrong to blow them off and not even bother to find a solution.
Even if it’s not your job to assist, dismissing someone’s difficulty by saying, “Then just don’t do it,” is rude and dismissive.
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Heidi had this to say,
Dec 18, 2011 @ 7:38 am (Quote)
Emily, I am sorry–what an aggravating situation!
My 2 month old, who is my 4th baby, did something similar. He used his tongue to draw the nipple in, then push it out. I could tell that the pain I felt meant something was wrong, but not exactly what. The LC and I put our fingers in his mouth (she wore a glove). That was how we identified what he was doing! Then I would give him a finger to suck on before his feed, and would push down on the tongue and say, “Down!”. That finally worked.
I did still have latch on pain for a few weeks, but it was manageable.
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That person has absolutely NO BUSINESS being a lactation consultant!
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