Breastfeeding-high palate, severe pain...any advice?

[rochelsmommy]

k, in short: this is my second baby. I nursed my now 3 1/2 year old for 15 months. i had everything from bleeding, cracked nipples, to mastitis, overactive letdown, possibly yeast and by the time we were done she had taken a chunk out of one nipple. (yes, ouch is right).

I persevered and the pain was much more bearable after about 6 months, but not great. never gave formula though and i'm proud.

my new one just turned 4 months old. i'm working with a great LC since day 1! right off the bat in the hospital i told her about my previous problems and after less than 24 hours i had bleeding nipples again.
she checked the babys mouth and right away told me she had a posterior tongue tie and a high palate.
since then we've been dealing with insanely, crazy, why the hell am i doing this to myself kind of pain. we've ruled out yeast and bacteria. I am great at latching her on so it's not that either.
the last time she watched me feed we came up with this.

I have an oversupply. She has a high palate. she never gets a good seal no matter how good the latch. the milk squirts into mouth for about a minute or 2 and she just laps it up. when it stops shooting out, she starts to "nurse" but in reality she is compressing the nipple the wrong way and only b/c of my high supply is she getting milk.
our feedings are very short, but she is huge!!! 95% for weight, which is apparently unheard of with these babies.
so essentially she is fine, but i am going crazy from pain. especially on my damaged side from my other daughter.
we think though that as her mouth gets bigger the issue resolves a little and so i'm pushing towards 6 months praying that things get better.

firstly- i need to know if anyone has ever heard of anything like this before.
second- what can i do for the pain? i've used gelpads but they are so expensive. lanolin is so messy and doesn't do much for me.

soo any suggestions?
thanks
Chani

[wencit]

Yikes. You have my sympathies, mama. That sounds SO painful.

Have you tried a different LC? Unfortunately, they are not all made the same, and some are better than others. I'm sure you've tried this, but have you used different nursing positions? DS would compress my nipple completely flat in the football hold, but in the cross cradle position, the pain was a little more tolerable.

Good luck!

[o_mom]

While not the exact same problem, both boys had somewhat high palates but compounding it was the fact that they never developed a central groove to their tongue and totally shredded my nipples. With DS1 I just waited it out and eventually he 'outgrew' it, though his latch was bad and flattened my nipples until the day he weaned at 15-16 months. With DS2, the LC suggested getting therapy through the early intervention service. We had occupational therapy for about 2 months and it made an amazing difference.

[rochelsmommy]

thanks for the suggestion to see a diff. LC, but i've seen a bunch already and they can't really figure it out except this one who claims to be an expert in tongue ties.

what sort of occupation therapy did you go to? was it about teaching the baby to suck? i've never heard of that and would love to know more
thanks
Chani

[o_mom]

The therapist was through First Steps which is our state's Early Intervention program, sometimes called 'birth to three'. If you google "early intervention <your state>" you should find it. She actually came to our house and worked with him. Mainly she worked on relaxing his jaw which was very tight and stretching the neck muscles. Also worked on getting his tongue down in the back. She would work with him for an hour and then give me a list of exercises to do with him in between sessions. Alot of her experience was in working with Down syndrome babies and getting them to breastfeed well.

Even if you don't qualify for services, the evaluation is helpful. We had a speech therapist and an occupational therapist who came to the evaluation and they gave me a list of suggestions to work on until the therapy could start. The therapy was on a sliding scale based on income and I think we paid $5/visit up to a max of $20/month. The maximum on the scale was pretty low, so even if you make alot it is not expensive. The down side is that it is government run, so it can take time to work through the system - 3-4 weeks for an evaluation and I think another 4-6 wks for therapy to start. A private therapist could probably get started faster, but would cost much more.

[rochelsmommy]

wow. thanks for the info.
i'm really not keen on waiting that long, and dealing with the sure to be tedious beaurocracy that government run programs are sure to be.

I will try and look into a local speech therapist though as I know of a couple. I'm wondering though if all of them are qualified in breastfeeding problems, or if its more like a specialty?

thanks for the suggestions
Chani

[egoldber]

The hospital I delivered at has speech pathologists and OTs on staff who work with newborn suck issues. It is a specialty within the field. My first child had a high palate and also low muscle tone/oral motor delay. We didn't realize the oral motor issues until she was much older and I didn't know then about getting early intervention. Honestly, the process is not that aduous, as we ended up getting EI anyway for speech issues when she was older. And I bet the program prioritizes intervention for infants. It is definitely worth calling and asking.

[hippychickaquarius]

So how did it all turn out? I'm going through all of this right now with my 4 month old. It's torture. Does it get better?

[Jenny_A]

I didn't have the high palate or tongue issues, but I had an oversupply of milk and would drown DD when she nursed as a little infant. My LC taught me to pinch the skin(not hard) right above my breast to slow down the flow of milk. It made a HUGE difference. Before, DD would suck and pull off and scream. She stopped doing that after I started the pinching method. After a month or so the issue resolved itself.

Again, not sure how that works with the mouth issues, but maybe it could help. I'm sorry you're having so much pain. It sounds like you're getting great support and advice!

Jenny

[arivecchi]

I just had a baby boy last week and my nipples are a wreck already. I cannot get him to open his mouth wide enough to latch on properly. I had this problem with DS1 and even after seeing numerous LCs, no one could figure out how to solve the problem. It got so bad that it developed into an infection and I decided to just pump from then on (around 4 months). I feel like I am giving up early in the process again, but I decided to start pumping this morning after seeing my bleeding nipples. I seriously cannot take the pain on top of the exhaustion and baby blues. My hats off to all you who can perserve and do this. For a "natural" process, breatfeeding is about the most frustrating thing I've ever experienced.

[HIU8]

DD had a similar issue. She has a very high palate. Her latch was painful. My nipples cracked and bled and I had intensly sharp pains from the beginning and nothing helped (tried lansinoh, I tried mothers milk tea to increase my supply, warm showers for the pain etc...). DD was tongue tied Anyway, I have supply issues in the first place and had to pump and BF. With DD she BF every hour for what seemed like an eternity and my supply was going down instead of up b/c she could not latch well (no time to pump b/c she was eating hourly and each feeding took a painful 30 minutes). She started to really loose weight and was starving so we switched to formula--by that time I had almost no supply anyway--and used AVENT nipples which she could get into her mouth and actually get formula into herself. She gained what she lost very rapidly and went to eating 12 ounces a feeding every 3 hours (FWIW she ate every 3 hours until we ended formula at 1 year).

[jenny]

I'm surprised that your milk supply is so big considering her palate issues, that's great.

I don't know if DD had the exact same problem, but the groove on the roof of her mouth is really close to the front of her mouth and she had horrible latch issues. I went to see an LC and she stuck her finger in DD's mouth to see how far she'd take the nipple and she'd only take it to that groove area and then started gagging if the LC tried to stick it further.

B/c she wasn't taking the nipple far enough, it impacted my milk supply.

Long story short, I ended up pumping. DD is HUGE at 6 months, weighing nearly 19 pounds, so it's working.

Whatever you decide to do, don't beat yourself up about it. You're doing your best to be a good mother.