So Discouraged, Please help!

ccleary1313

I've posted here once before, when my LO was first born, but now baby is 3 weeks and we're still having problems.

I've had my midwife help me a lot, and generally after a visit from her we seem to improve, only to go back to how it was before. At first, LO had a problem while I was engorged and wouldn't open his mouth wide enough to get a good latch, so he'd only grab the nipple. This resulted in really really REALLY sore nipples and I was prescribed APNO cream. Once I stopped being engorged, we still had a problem having LO open his mouth wide enough. This is my second baby, and while I had minor "beginner" problems with my first son and getting a good latch from him, it wasn't nearly as bad as this time. I've watched a MILLION videos about latches, tried every trick I can think of (bringing him to my breast, putting my breast in his mouth to get the whole aerola, tugging on his chin as he's about to latch to open wide, tugging on his chin once he's latched to slide his lips wider apart). I hold the base of his skull and hold him tightly to me. I break the latch and try again if it's really painful, but the more I do that the more frustrated he gets. He doesn't have lip tie or tongue tie. He's flanging his bottom lip out most of the time, and generally I can fix his lip if he doesn't. If I get a good latch, over the course of eating he tends to slowly loosen his latch almost? He ends up just on the nipple over the course of the feeding. He's definitely getting milk and is growing like a weed. We used to do the football hold a lot at first, but now that he's over 10 pounds I find that harder on me (I feel like I'm holding him with just my arm even if I use lots of pillows) so now we just do the cross cradle hold.

My nipples have chunks missing from them, are raw and soooo sooo soooooo sore. It hurts to wear a shirt. I wanted to exclusively breastfeed, but I started pumping this week and last night gave him a bottle (one of those bottles made just for breastfed babies) to give me a break and maybe heal a little. I didn't want to do this at this point, I was hoping to wait much longer before pumping and it was only going to be so my husband could feed LO while I went grocery shopping or something lol. I'm worried about messing with my supply. I gave up after a month with my first son, and I felt so horribly guilty. I don't want to give up this time, but if my latch was working, wouldn't I have healed by now? And BF-ing isn't supposed to hurt, but I can't make it better.

Please help!