Biting While Nursing--Help!

[pandd06]

DS is 6 months old and has two, new adorable teeth. He has always been a clamp-and-pull-er while nursing--to the point where I frequently have a blister on one side. I tell him "big mouth" and relatch him and I'll press him in to get him to let up gently, but it still keeps happening. (It only happens on one side. The other side he is gentle with.) Now that he has teeth, I actually have yelled out with surprise and pain. Any suggestions for encouraging him to be gentle and for how I can keep my cool?

[sunwise]

I have gone through this a few times with my 11-month-old! I (literally) feel your pain. First, I don't think you can do much about crying out in pain when bitten - that's just an involuntary (and completely understandable) reaction. What you can do is focus more on your reaction afterwards - don't get mad or anything, just say something like "I see that you don't want to nurse right now", unlatch, and wait a little while before trying to nurse again. He will start to understand that biting = not nursing, and will over time stop biting if he really wants to nurse.

Another thing that I did was keep my pinky finger near the corner of his mouth while he nursed so that I could unlatch him the second he seemed like he was about to bite. I did this mostly for self-preservation - it was painful nursing on nipples that have been bitten! - but over time the presence of my finger there was also a reminder for him to not bite. (I don't have to leave my finger there everytime we nurse - I just did it when we were having the biting issues.)

We have gone through this twice, and using these measures pretty much took care of the problem within a few days. I would also suggest that your check out www.kellymom.com for some other good tips - there are lots of different reasons why babies bite, and they have different solutions.

Hope you get through this quickly!