9 days in and every latch is TOE CURLING. Is breastfeeding supposed to hurt this much, and when does it stop?

Right, I need someone to tell me honestly if this is normal or if something is actually wrong, because I am not coping tonight.

Baby is 9 days old, breastfeeding, and every single time she latches on it is TOE CURLING. I mean I brace myself, grip the edge of the sofa, and count to about thirty before it eases off to something bearable. My nipple on the right looks a bit flattened and there is a small crack starting. We feed basically constantly so I am doing this dance ten plus times a day and I have started dreading her waking up, which makes me feel awful for even typing.

Everyone keeps saying it's normal and it toughens up. But is it? Is it supposed to hurt this much, and if it does stop, WHEN. I do not want to give up but I genuinely cannot picture months of this.

Oh I remember this exact feeling and I'm sorry, it's grim. First thing, and I wish someone had said it to me sooner: "it's supposed to hurt, just push through" is the bit of advice that nearly finished me off, and it isn't really true. A bit of tenderness or a tugging feeling in the early days while you both learn it, yes. Bracing and counting to thirty every feed is usually your body telling you the latch is off, not that you're weak.

The thing that turned it around for me was getting her mouth really WIDE open before she went on, like a yawn, chin pressed in first, so she got more of the underneath of the areola than the top. When I finally got it the difference was instant, honestly shocking. Are you able to get anyone to watch an actual feed in person?

Just adding one more thing for anyone reading this later, because I lost weeks assuming it was latch when it wasn't. If your pain starts up AFTER a stretch of comfortable feeding, and it's more of a burning or shooting feeling deep in the breast, sometimes on both sides at once, that can be thrush rather than latch and it gets sorted a completely different way.

Beckyt yours sounds like early latch stuff from the timing though, 9 days is bang in the window. When my right side cracked I did keep feeding through it, I just got someone to check the crack looked ok and wasn't going infected. Slather of plain lanolin after feeds got me through.

beckyt84 said:

I count to about thirty before it eases off

Reading this at the right time, I hope. Let me give you the straight answer first: no, feeding is not meant to be painful the whole way through, and toe-curling pain at nine days almost always means something specific and fixable, not that you aren't tough enough. That "it toughens up" line is one of the most persistent myths on this board and it keeps parents suffering longer than they need to.

Here is roughly where the line sits. In the first 10 to 14 days a brief tenderness as the baby draws the breast in, a stretch of maybe 30 to 60 seconds of discomfort at the start of a feed, fading over the first couple of weeks, is common and settles. What is NOT in the normal range: pain that lasts the entire feed, a nipple that comes out flattened, ridged, or lipstick-shaped, or cracking and bleeding. Those point to a shallow latch far more often than anything else, and the piece on why breastfeeding hurts walks through how to read the difference.

The usual culprits, in rough order: a shallow latch, which is the big one and often fixes with a deeper, more asymmetric latch (chin buried, baby's nose free, a big mouthful rather than just the tip). Then tongue tie, anterior or the sneakier posterior kind, which can stop a baby dropping the tongue and keep the latch shallow no matter how good your positioning is. Then thrush, a Candida overgrowth that tends to arrive later than day nine with that burning, both-sides pain jessb92 described. And more rarely vasospasm or Raynaud's, where the nipple blanches white after a feed and then throbs, worse in the cold. Different problems, different fixes, which is exactly why a name from a forum only gets you so far.

Timing to hold onto: once the actual cause is addressed, most latch pain eases within a few days, and a cracked nipple usually heals in about 3 to 7 days once it isn't being re-injured every feed. If you have worked on the latch and it still hurts after roughly two weeks, that is the signal to get hands-on help rather than wait it out. The order I'd suggest is get someone to watch a full feed in person, a midwife, health professional, or a board-certified lactation consultant, because twenty minutes of watching tells them more than any thread can, and the notes on getting a good latch are worth reading before that appointment so you know what they are adjusting. For the thrush or vasospasm possibilities, that's a conversation with your own GP, since those can need treatment I can't sensibly guess at from here.

We chased the latch for nearly three weeks and it turned out to be a posterior tongue tie that two different people had missed. I'm not saying that's you, honestly most of the time it is just the positioning, but if you get the latch genuinely deep and correct and it STILL hurts, ask specifically about the tongue and don't let anyone wave you off. Getting it looked at properly changed everything for us.

Update in case it helps the next person googling this at midnight. Saw a lactation consultant on Tuesday who sat and watched a whole feed, and it was the latch, she called it shallow. We worked on getting a much bigger mouthful and I could actually feel the difference sitting right there in the room.

It's not 100% pain free yet but it's a five out of ten instead of a nine, and the cracked side is nearly healed. Mostly I'm just relieved it wasn't me being dramatic or failing to "toughen up". Thank you all, I'd been feeling so alone with it.