Breastfeeding: Tricker than I'd expected

It never occurred to me to wonder about the functional details of breastfeeding until recently. I figured that hormones Did Things to the mother's breasts, infants suck instinctively, and it would work as simply as an adult drinking through a straw. I'd heard about women having trouble with not producing enough milk or with sore nipples. When I thought about it at all, I assumed that nipples became sore because they were chapped and that some type of lotion would help.

My assumptions were wrong.

Yes, infants suck instinctively, but they can latch onto the nipple correctly or incorrectly. An incorrect latch hurts. It can hurt a little bit, or it can cause feet-kicking, face-scrunching pain. Have you ever sprained a joint and had to hop on the other foot or wave the other hand while saying "ow, ow, ow" (or something less polite) in a very loud voice in order to handle the pain? It's like that, eight to ten times a day.

I now understand why some animals abandon their young.

Don't worry and please don't call Child Protective Services. I'm not going to abandon Daughter 0.1. I'm not even going to stop feeding her breast milk. Unlike wild animals, I have good options for dealing with nipple pain. The most convenient one is painkillers. If one feeding goes particularly badly, I can take an ibuprofen or acetaminophen and that keeps the next feeding from hurting as much. We have a breast pump so I can pump milk out of my breasts and feed it to her in bottles. And for help finding a permanent solution, there are lactation consultants. So far I have spoken to two on the phone and had appointments with two others.

The baby prep breastfeeding class and the nurses who helped me with breastfeeding while I was still in the hospital said it was important to get a deep latch, but one of the lactation consultants I spoke to after coming home gave me an exercise that really explained why. Put your finger in your mouth so that your teeth are on the first joint and suck. The part of the tongue under your finger tip is flat and pushing up against your finger. The part of the roof of your mouth above your fingernail is flat and low. Now move your finger so that your teeth are at the second knuckle and suck. The tongue under your fingertip rounds down when you suck, and the roof of your mouth above your fingernail is round and a little higher. So a bad, shallow latch squeezes the nipple between two flat surfaces while a good, deep latch cradles the sensitive tip of the nipple between round, roomier parts of the mouth.

So breastfeeding well seems to requires more than instinct. I'm working with lactation consultants so that Daughter 0.1 and I can improve our technique and get a deep latch every time.