Causes of breast pain during breast feeding and its management – Dr. Shaheena Athif

So during the feeding the mother may experience some breast pain. So these are usually taken care by the proper position of the baby especially baby’s mouth should be wide open, the baby’s abdomen should face the mother’s abdomen and most of the areola part should be inside the mouth of the baby. In such case the pain will be less and lesser chances of the mother getting any sore nipples or cracked nipple. Another cause of the breast pain is if the mother is not frequently feeding that is in the first 3months , obviously the mother is in a lot of milk production and the mother should keep feeding every 2 hours, in case this is not fed, the milk is collected and causes severe pain in the engorged breast. Now this can be relieved by, in case it happens it can be relieved by putting some warm compresses, and following which you can express a little milk out and then followed by feeding the baby.in case this is not done. Then the swollen breast along with maybe an obstruction in the ducts. This can also cause severe pain. So swollen breast with a lump, it is suggestive that some of the ducts inside the breasts are blocked . So again as I have mentioned you have to put a warm compress and slowly express the milk so that the duct is opened up. In case none of this expression of the milk and the milk is taken out the milk gets collected inside and the mother may experience fever. This leads to breast infection , mastitis and it may form a abscess which will require further treatment by the gynaecologist, either will have to take oral medications, even maybe an incision will be required. So these are all the major causes of breast pain.