Dear Judy, We had my son’s tongue tie clipped and he is eating better now, but now I have blanching on my nipples? Do you think this might be from shallow latch? Or a forceful letdown? Do you have any advice?
I am so happy to hear that your son is nursing better now that his tongue-tie has been clipped. This will make a huge difference. Blanching on your nipples is actually pretty normal. The only time you have to worry is if you are having pain with it. Your nipples will often looked blanched or slightly deformed right after nursing. They should go back to normal within a few minutes. This is normally caused by compression of the nipple during nursing. As long as you aren’t having any pain, you are fine. Just keep up the great work.
If you are experiencing pain with the blanching, then you will want to discover what is causing it and work on correcting it. There are a few things that can be causing it, but the most common is shallow latch. If your baby isn’t latched on well enough or if he bottom lip is curled in instead of being flanged, you may get too much compression on your nipple which will cause nipple pain in addition to the whitening of the nipple. Make sure you open your baby’s mouth wide and push on his chin as he latches to pull his bottom lip out into a flanged position. This will help. If you can’t get a good latch, release him and try again. It would be extremely helpful if you are able to have a lactation consultant come and help you to get a good latch.
Another thing that can cause blanching of the nipples is the baby is clamping down. There are a variety of things that can cause your baby to clamp down, including a forceful let down. If this is the case, you will want to nurse your baby laying back in a reclined position with your baby on top – this will force your milk to travel up-hill and will help with a forceful letdown. You can also hand-express until your let-down happens to release some of the pressure prior to latching your baby on.
There is also a medical condition where your nipples will blanche because of vasospasms, or constricting of the blood vessels that are going to your nipple. This is a much more serious condition and is quite painful. You can read more about vasospasms on KellyMom and the links provided there.
Have you ever had blanching of your nipples during or after nursing? What did you do, if anything, to correct the problem? Please share your experiences to help this mom with her baby!
With my third baby I had blanching, along with horrible pain. It turned out that I was suffering from Raynaud’s Phenomenon. I had an incredibly hard time with it and really feel like there is not enough information out there about it. I had to be an advocate for myself and really steel myself to continue breastfeeding. I am happy to say that I am still going at 13+ months! There are ways to alleviate some of the pain, but I found most did not work for me. Once summer and warm weather started, my symptoms got a lot better.
If the blanching occurs AFTER baby comes off breast, it very well might be Raynaud’s. If the nipple is blanched as baby comes off the breast, I think it is more likely to be a poor latch or baby clamping down.
Good luck mama!
.-= Brenna´s last blog ..Tuesday Top Ten: 10 Activities for Grandparents To Do With Their Grandbabies =-.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Judy Masucci and Danielle. Danielle said: @MommyNews answers my question http://bit.ly/1PlayZ […]
Raynauds actually effects about 20% of all woman that are of child bearing age.
Click on my link to find out more info on Raynauds and how to handle it during breastfeeding
.-= BFproblems´s last blog ..Sep 14, Adoptive breastfeeding All you need to know for success =-.