Now that W and I are completely comfortable with our breast feeding routine I feel like its important for me to share the secret to our success.

When we first started, the nipple pain was really hard for me. My daughter kept using me as a pacifier and hadn’t latched properly the first few times leaving my nipples so chapped and sensitive. I would push through it, but her initial latch always made my toes curl under and me silently (most times) cuss the pain. I almost decided to give up. Then comes the nipple shield! This thing was a lifesaver! We used it during every feeding for the next week. This gave me enough time to heal up and helped my daughter to figure out a proper latch. It was a bit messier than just feeding on the breast, but it gave me enough of a break to get us back on track and keep me from giving up.

The shield I liked best between the Advent and Medela was the medela. It seemed to stick onto my skin better and didn’t have to be readjusted during feedings.

And for all the NICU mamas, my sister was the one who introduced this to me and her daughter was a NICU baby. For her the nipple shield helped her daughter to start latching after initially being bottle fed while in NICU. It only took a few feedings for her to transition to exclusively breast feeding. The nipple shield is enough like the nipple of a bottle that she would latch onto it and got used to the smell of my sisters breast near her during feeding time which helped tremendously with the transition.