Nipple pain at 15mos

[cara1]

Okay, I consider myself fairly competent since we've been nursing successfully for 15 mos now. We've managed many hurdles thus far, including ratty, painful nipples in the very beginning. But for the past two days, it KILLS when DS nurses. He's not biting, nor pulling away; there is no candida or other abnormality that I can see. I can't figure out what's wrong, but it's the most painful it's been in ages. And unlike in the newborn period when it would hurt just during the latch-on, and then subside, now it hurts continuously, to the point where I unhook him as soon as I can. Anyone have any ideas? Is this "Nature's way of telling us to wean?"

[sparkeze]

First off I would definitely recommend that you see a LC or LLL. It could be thrush even if you can't see anything on the surface.

I had this happen to me a couple weeks ago though - DS would latch on and my nipples were really sore during his whole nursing. I too was starting to dread nursing him. It went away though and I think in hindsight that it had something to do with the fact that I had been sick with cold/flu during that time. Maybe my skin was just way more sensitive during that time? I'm not sure. But as soon as I started feeling better the pain went away.

But definitely talk to someone about this! I really doubt nature is telling you to wean by inflicting pain on you!

[C99]

That definitely sounds like thrush to me! I had the same thing with Nate a few weeks ago and while we are in early days of BFing, the symptoms sound the same. Nate didn't have spots in his mouth and I didn't have them on my nips, but he did have a nasty diaper rash, which the ped diagnosed as a yeast rash. We had just gone off nipple shields and I was curling my toes in agony every time he latched on -- I was so relieved that it was thrush and not regular BFing pain!

[Momof3Labs]

I agree with thrush, or, um, could you be pg? ;-)

[cara1]

So, a friend of mine think she may have figured it out. DS has been putting up much more of a fight recently to get to sleep. Thus, instead of nursing once and going to sleep, we go through this cycle of in the crib, out of the crib, in the crib, out of the crib. And he tends to go for the nursing pillow more than usual, so I nurse him a few more times before he gets to sleep. Kind of annoying, I don't know why he's so resistant all of a sudden to going to sleep. He used to go to sleep fairly easily at 8ish. Now it's 9, 9:30ish, or even 10:00. Anyway, my friend thought my nipples just weren't used to all this extra nursing anymore, since we'd cut down to 2x/day for months now. It's all starting to add up. If you see my post in the diaper forum, he's been leaking through his overnight diapers for the past few nights. I couldn't figure out why; he's not drinking anything after dinner. Ah, but he's nursing more. So it all adds up. Now, how to figure out how to make him go nicely into his crib instead of standing tall, grabbing onto me with a death-grip, and screaming bloody murder....

[ginalc]

Check out the book by Jodi Mindell called Sleeping Through The Night.

It worked for us!

gina, mom to 3