>Shape of nipple the moment baby lets go (or mom takes baby off).
>The only difference she should see it it will probably look a little
>longer overall.

I've always thought this too.  But I've been quite taken with Rebecca
Glover's work on positioning, and she's pretty certain that the nipple
should be *short* (no longer than normal) coming out of baby's mouth.  She
says (I'm paraphrasing thru all this, I hope correctly) that a well-placed
nipple is already back at the junction of the hard and soft palate, so the
baby does no additional tugging on the breast/nipple tissue to keep it
there.

If the nipple doesn't quite reach to where it needs to be, she says, we may
see the breast slide slightly in and out of baby's mouth as the baby draws
the nipple farther in with each suck.  She makes a point of saying we should
see no slippage of the breast as the baby nurses.

When I first heard that on her video, I wondered to myself: is *this* the
origin of the upper lip sucking blister we so often see??  If the lip rests
relaxed on a non-moving breast, why should there be so much friction that a
blister forms?  Is it really just that the inner mucosa isn't against the
breast?  Or do our traditional latch-on techniques get the nipple
almost-but-not-quite where it needs to be and baby has to finish the job
with each suck?  Her latch technique has the baby - head extended -
attaching to the hunk of breast "below" (from baby's perspective) the
nipple, with the nipple then brushing or folding under baby's upper lip at
the last moment and "rolling back to the soft palate".  It sure looks like a
deeper, more secure latch than what we tend to achieve in this country.

I need to start watching:  does lack of sucking blister accompany short
nipple post-feed?  Does elongated nipple, post-feed, tend to go along with a
sucking blister?

Any thoughts on Rebecca's observations?

--
Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY
www.wiessinger.baka.com

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