Breast Feeding Café
I attended the Breast-feeding Café on Monday. As this was my first time attending the café. I wanted to observe the other practitioners, to gain knowledge about breast-feeding in a practical situation.
There was the Mother and father and their baby. I introduced myself and asked if they would mind me sitting in to hear their problem and the advice given to improve her breastfeeding experience.
This mother was suffering from extremely painful breastfeeding and they had previously had advice on latching on but the feeding was still painful, and the parents were unsure if their baby was latching on correctly.
The NCT trained practitioner stated by gaining a history of the problem. Then initaly looked at the baby , checked his mouth for evidence of thrush , and tongue tie.
The babys mouth didn’t appear to have thrush , but his tongue didn’t appear to be pushing out quite as well as it should.
The practitioner suggested that this might cause a problem, as the baby is not able to draw the milk from the breast as well if the tongue is tied, and he maybe just using one area of the areola making it sore.
There were many attempts made to get a good latch on, but as the mother was obviously in pain she hesitated, and missed the moment to latch the baby on properly a few times. The football hold was used to get a good latch on, with assistance from the practitioner, but the mother was still in pain.
The practitioner, discussed where exactly the pain in the breasts was, the mother identified it was particularly painful in 1 breast, in the nipples and she got pain after a shower and was unable to dry them with a towel. The mother said that she was using a cream to help with cracked nipples to see if this would help. When looking at the nipples and from the history It was possible she had thrush, so it was suggested that she went to the GP to get some cream for her and possibly the baby, and to stop using the cream as it was creating a...