Treating Sore Nipples from Breastfeeding

Video Transcript

"In this clip I am going to be talking about how to deal with and treat sore nipples. If your nipples are feeling sore and uncomfortable, one way to help alleviate that is by using a really nice nipple cream. I really like the Earth Mama Angle Baby or Mother Love Nipple Cream. They're both organic and based with an olive oil based. Lanolin is a very popular thing to use for nipple cream and I believe it's what you get when you come home from the hospital but often times it's really tacky and hard to spread on your nipple and can hurt which is no fun. So with the one I recommend is one that is really soft and emollient and really goes on very easily and lightly. Now both of these or specially the organically ones The Mother Love and The Earth Mama are really good because you don't need to wipe it off before you put the baby to the breast and this helps just to provide some healing herbs to the breast as well as just some relief and comfort. The other thing you can use for sore nipples is The Earth Mama Angle Baby Bosom Buddies Poultice comes with a muslin pack you put some of the tea in it and you steep it you don't drink it you put it right on your nipples and it provides some soothing, calming relief via the organic herbs. Now if you have more seriously sore nipples that are cracked or damaged you're going to want to do a little more. Express some breast milk on it because that's the best medicine ever and then you can do either dry wound healing or a moist wound healing. For moist wound healing you going to want to use something called a Hydrogel and there's different companies that provide these. It's really sticky on one side. This is something that they use in the hospital for moist wound healing. You can keep this in the refrigerator it feels really good. And just apply it to your nipple after your done breastfeeding and keep it there until the next feeding. And then follow the directions on the packet because each are a little different for how long that you can use them for but these feel very nice. Some mom's have very damage nipples because the baby was latched on improperly. In that case it feels really uncomfortable to even have the bra touching the nipples. So for them we recommend the soft shells which are for sore nipples. You put this on your breast and then you cover it with your bra. And what it does is it keeps your bra away from the skin of your nipple and then when your ready to nurse you take that off and put the baby on and then when you are done you go ahead and put this on until the nipple is healed and it is more comfortable for you to have your bra on. Another thing that people use is called a nipple shield. The nipple shield is used while you're nursing. This isn't one of my favorite things because it really is a band aid because then you have to wean the baby from this. But a lot of mom's like it if their nipples are really sore with cracked or damaged because it prevents the baby from being directly on their nipple. So you use this while you're nursing and you take it off afterwards and hopefully you won't need to use it for very long. So those are some things that you can use if you have sore cracked nipples. The other thing I recommend is to consult the local lactation consultation because if you have cracked and damaged nipples it means your baby's latched on improperly and you really need to fix that latch. So good luck and happy nursing."