we have a biter.

breastfeeding, creative parenting, holdy, new moms

we have a biter.

Published by

nomiddlename

April 30, 2013

RED ALERT: We have a biter. And I’m not talking about her biting other children. I’m talking about her biting… MY girls, if you get my drift.

Holden is in full-on teething mode, with two teeth at the bottom and two more suckers coming in on top. Let me tell you, those four teeth are not something you want surrounding your… teat. Another fun trick she’s learned is to pull her head back while nursing, taking my mamilla with her, stretching it like it’s a piece of taffy. So that’s pretty cool.

“baby bites nipples” is not a phrase I ever thought I’d google, but here we are. Thank goodness for KellyMom, which was my go-to resource in the early days of nursing and is still just as helpful at (almost) 11 months.

Apparently booby biting is a normal thing when baby is teething and I should just continue as I have been–liberate my nip from her mouth calmly without yelping, because some babies (mine) find the shouting funny and keep biting like it’s a game. Awesome.

I am a little excited to try these secondary options if that doesn’t work though:

If that doesn’t work, pull baby TOWARD you, very close to your breast. This will make it a little hard to breathe, so baby will automatically let go to open her mouth more and uncover her nose to breathe. A variation of this that some moms use is to gently pinch baby’s nose closed for just a second to get her to open her mouth and release the nipple.

Sounds like just a tiny bit of retribution for my aching nippies.

Was your kid a biter? Any tips?

2 responses to “we have a biter.”

KNay

May 9, 2013

Just checking your blog after seeing your cupcake almost fail on fb.Yeah Miri DEF did the booby biting. It sucked. I remember KellyMoms advice being the best (thank god for her blog) that yeah the yelling def didn’t work and the pushing her in didn’t alway work either but the using my finger to liberate said stretched nip did and the nursing session would be in time out. Eventually that did the trick but it took time. Ugh too much. After that she was great. We were good nursing (eventually part-time after year one) til 20 months when I wanted to try getting knocked up again. She really never bit again after her initial booby biting phase (which happened much earlier on for me, darn early teether!)

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1. ohbothermeg
  
  May 9, 2013
  
  Too funny, Bunce! She’s been better about it lately, thank god. I’m hoping to continue nursing until I get knocked up again – right now I only nurse in the morning, when I get home from work and then before bed… though before bed, I don’t think she’s getting much; more so for comfort. I would have liked to nurse full-time but pumping at work got to be too much.
  
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