bf mom's please help, i am so depressed.?
my eleven and a half month old daughter is still breastfeeding but it hurts me so much. i am trying to continue to breastfeed until the h1n1 thing blows over but it hurts. her teeth feel like needles scraping across my skin. she refuses formula and bottles. what can i do? i am so depressed to the point where i am crying. i am conflicted between trying to protect my daughter from the h1n1 and preventing myself further pain. she is extremely dependent on my breast. she is also still night feeding. please, any helpful tips and advice will help.
Update:but she is still so dependent on it. she still gets really hungry for breastmilk especially since she just got over a cold. i don't want to just cut her off cold turkey. maybe during the day i will only feed her once and then continue night feeding until she quits. it doesn't hurt at night, so i guess she has a good latch at night. but the daytime is hell
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Mum of 3 - How funny!! My aunt is expecting her 4th child on July 2010 as well!!
Anyways, I would stop now if I were you. She has to stop at one point or another. Might as well be now.
oh i feel for you!! it must be difficult especially if she's still feeding at night and you're not getting enough sleep.
i felt really down until my son was a bit less dependent of breastmilk. if i let him he'd have it all the time and i think he still would up until this day if i hadn't put my foot down!! but i think you can still breast feed your daughter but still be "you".
what i did first was to stop the night feeds. it was hard and i just kept comforting my son. he was 10 months old at this stage and it took a couple of weeks before he stopped asking.
next, i put him in his own cot because we had been co-sleeping for a couple of months due to his teething (turned out he wasn't teething any more but just enjoying the breast milk!!). this was surprisingly easy. we did the controlled crying and it only lasted about 10 minutes to our surprise. i think since i first cut out the milk and then put him in his own cot, he knew i was being serious and that there wasn't much point putting up a fight.
after that i gradually cut down the breast feeding during the day until he was only getting some in the morning and then before bed at night. we continued this for almost a year after that. i tried to stop once or twice and it really wasn't a problem, but he kept getting all of the sicknesses/bugs going around so i would start again because we didn't have the time to be at home sick with him all the time. once the flu season was over (april) we stopped all together. he was 20 months when we stopped.
also, she shouldn't be biting you and hurting you with her teeth. when she does it, take the breast away immediately and she should get the idea very soon. keep doing it and she'll soon associate biting with no milk. also tell her "no" firmly.
if you're still having trouble, try ringing breast feeding help lines. i believe the nct has one.
Ugh. I went through this with my son a few weeks ago. I basically had to just keep working with him to get him to latch properly. This seems like a fairly common problem among babies/toddlers around this age, so don't get down about it. She's old enough to understand that it hurts Mommy when she latches on like that. Just try taking her off and putting her back on again, explaining that it hurts you. She understands a lot more than you think. It also really helped to nurse him in a dim, quiet room even during the day.
Go back to basics, review everything you learned about latching/positioning when you first started nursing.
Here's a list of possibilities if you think it's more than just latch.
http://www.kellymom.com/bf/older-baby/sorenipples-...
It's your body & if she's hurting you & you want to stop then stop. Weaning is hard but if that's what you want then you've done so well to make it this far. I do know on the other hand though if you wish to continue to feed if you go to your local chemist you can buy a product called nipple guard, It's like a silicone nipple cover that you put over your breast it may stop your baby from hurting you with her teeth.