LC: major problems latching on *moved to proper place*

overtonhayes

Lillian has had trouble latching on from the get-go, and it's causing me terrible pain (nursing makes me cry out in pain, and the pain lasts all day long). We saw two different lactation consultants in the hospital at birth and when they were there, she was able to get a latch. I say 'a latch' rather than 'a good latch' because I don't think it was a good latch, even with their help: it still hurt, a lot, but I thought that was because I was just starting out BFing and it was normal. When the LCs weren't around, I had to have a nurse help me BF her every time. She just won't open her mouth wide enough.

At her two-week paediatrician's appointment, they referred us to another LC. She told me some different positions (which didn't help), gave me a nipple shield (which didn't help, and in fact even made things a bit worse), and took a look at Lillian's frenulum. She said that Lillian isn't opening her mouth wide enough, and also she is 'snapping' her jaw, which is part of what's causing me so much pain. She said there was some tongue-tie but she didn't think it looked bad enough to be causing a problem, but pulled in another LC for a second opinion. The second LC said that it did look like it was causing a problem, and getting her tongue clipped might help. We had her tongue clipped, but since her frenulum is weird - instead of running too far along the tongue from back to front, it goes too far from side to side - they only clipped a little and said they could clip more if necessary. That was two weeks ago, and I haven't seen any improvement.

We had a consulatation for speech therapy. Even that didn't help. They tried gently squeezing Lillian's cheeks together to get her to open wider, which didn't work. I'm waiting on them to get in touch with my insurance company to get the speech therapy going. Last night when she was crying, DH and I took a good look at her and realised that even when she's screaming at the top of her lungs, her mouth doesn't open very wide 'vertically', only horizontally. DH also can't open his mouth very wide, and he thinks she might have 'his jaw'.

If you have any advice, anything at all, I'd be so grateful. Is there anything we can do? I'm getting really desperate now. I also have some specific questions:

- I've always thought that it's normal for breastfeeding to hurt for a minute or so at each feeding, even with a good latch. Is that correct? Should I be in this much pain?
- Is it possible that some babies just aren't able to breastfeed? Could my H be right about her jaw?

Thank you, and sorry for the long post.