For those who had cracked nipples...

mandy522

I have the grand canyon of cracks on my left nipple (it actually was two cracks and where they met there is basically now a wide hole) that appeared about 10 days ago. I've been using APNO for a week and if anything, it seems to be getting worse, but definitely no better. I've seen 2 LCs and both told me the latch is fine (not perfect, but fine) and it should be healing, but I'm dying here. It hurts like you can't believe at the beginning of a feeding and I have some achy pain in my entire breast between feedings. A friend of mine who went thru something similar suggested I start pumping only from that side and giving him a bottle of expressed milk instead of the breast to give it time to heal, but I'm concerned that since he isn't a perfect latcher to begin with that it's going to be hard to get him back on the breast. And I'm not sure it will work anyway.

Did any of you have success with pumping for a short time to give your nipple time to heal? Any other suggestions? We are definitely having some challenges with BFing other than this crack, but LO is only 26 days old and I really don't want to give it up. I do really want to get this healed and get back on track, though!

TIA!