Pain on one side only?

blu-eyedwife

Hi ladies!  I wanted to pick your collective minds for my SIL.  She's had a really rough start of it, but it's very important to her to breastfeed, so any tips would be greatly appreciated.  To begin, the first night home, the baby wouldn't sleep.  At all.  Not for a minute.  They got that under control, but understandably, the baby lost more weight than "normal" those first few days and her "LC" had her pumping and giving a bottle at 4 days.  Which caused some overproduction, clogged ducts, and mastitis.

The mastitis is cleared up, but the past few days she's been having shooting pains only when nursing on the right side.  She has been cleared for thrush, which was the initial thought due to the shooting pains, and the fact she was on antibiotics for the mastitis.  It seems that the culprit might be a bad latch on the right side only, because the baby really fights nursing on that side.  Per report she started nursing with a football hold, but the baby was kicking, hitting, and refusing the breast.  She switched to cross cradle, which worked at first, then baby started refusing to latch then too.  So then she started nursing on the left and switching over to the right mid-feed.  Now she can get the baby to latch on the right, but for some reason the baby refuses to open her mouth wide when latching on the right the way she does on the left.

Like many new mothers she's tired and frustrated and willing to try anything.  My mom is sending an LC over to their house next week, but in the meantime, any tips or tricks if you had similar issues?

HopingforChange

My baby sometimes does this (shallow latch) on the breast that has a bigger supply. Is it possible that baby is getting too much milk too fast? If so, momma could try a bit of hand expression through let down then latch baby.