Worked for me. (Avent Nipple Shields)

Member Name: lexijoe

Product:	Avent Nipple Shields
Date:	03/02/03 (394 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Can help to heal sore nipples

Disadvantages: may not work for everybody

When my daughter was first born, she seemed to have no problems with breastfeeding, I was the one who had the problems. She would start off feeding properly and then would fall asleep and slightly off the breast so she would just be sucking on the nipple when she woke to carry on feeding. I didn't realise this was happening and before long my nipples were very cracked and sore. I carried on with the breast feeding as she was a good feeder but they were getting worse at every feed. As I was still in hospital after a caesarian (written up in different opinion) one of the midwives told me about nipple shields. Her very words were, 'use them for 48hrs at the most and your breasts should heal up enough to not have to use them again.'

My mum found some in Sainsburys and as soon as they were sterilised I used them. Wow! What a difference. I was able to feed Kay and not have any pain at all. Also because milk builds up in the shield and your nipple is sat in a little puddle of milk then they heal up quicker as the milk is an excellent healing agent. Within a day my breasts had healed to a point where I could feed without the shields and Kay didn't seem to mind what was available (breast or shield) as long as the milk was on offer.

I don't think I would have carried on breast feeding if I hadn't have used the nipple shields.

As every womans body (and baby!) is different then the shields won't work wonders for everybody. I think the fact that I only needed to use them for a day helped as Kay didn't have time to get used to them before going back to breast.

Good luck to any mums or mums to be.

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