Barracuda baby causing sore nipples?

[jillybeans]

GAAH! My little dude is a freaking barracuda. It's getting hard to get a nice deep latch...he'll arch forward (he already has incredible neck strength at 5 days) and start sucking before I even insert my nipple, and OMG he's strong. He actually bruised my thumb from sucking! His upper lip is getting plenty of areola, but the bottom it's hard to tell. His chin is in the right spot, nice and low. When I look at his mouth it is hard to tell. Any ideas on how to keep him from arching forward and how to get my nip in farther? They're starting to scab, and it needs to stop NOW! He's getting a good enough latch to get plenty of milk, it's just hurting ME!

His suck is incredibly strong...way stronger than I've ever seen. My nip...it doesn't hurt under it where you'd think it would if he wasn't getting enough areola. It hurts on the SIDES of the nipple...what the heck? The top and bottom don't hurt at all, but the sides do. Any ideas?

He's my fourth and I've had three prior bad latchers, but never something confusing like this (and never such as strong sucker)

[homemademom]

Does he tip his forehead down? Does he flange out his upper lip or curl it under? If so, you might check for tongue and lip ties. You should be able to fully flip his lip up with your finger, but if not, it could be tied. The tongue should be able to reach the roof of the mouth when his mouth is open and he should be able to extend it past his bottom lip. Is your nipple misshapen when it comes out of his mouth (with a crease, smashed, or flat on one side like a new lipstick?

[jillybeans]

did some research and he has a major maxillary frenum tie on the top, and possibly a posterior tie on the bottom. I have a call in to the LC and hopefully she will work with me to correct it quickly! Thanks!

[homemademom]

I'm glad you're figuring it out!  Hopefully your LC will know of a specialist to treat it, if not, here's a list of some: http://www.lowmilksupply.org/frenotomy.shtml