There has recently been some discussion about the use of Breast Shells. We
sometimes use these in cases of sore nipples but we use nipple formers,
which have a narrower hole to fit over the nipple for mothers with inverted
nipples, if this is what the mother requests.

I thought I would like to share the story of a Mom who used them with great
success. In my pre IBCLC days, in our LLL group, a Mom with bilateral truely
inverted nipples, was very motivated to breastfeed her third baby.

She had given birth to two boys 17 and 19 years previously and had been
discouraged from breastfeeding because of the state of her nipples. After
being given all the options, she chose to use the Nipple Formers and was so
keen, that she used them from the 3rd month of her pregnancy (she came to
her 1st LLL meeting when she was about 8 weeks pregnant).

She gave birth to her daughter via an epidural Caesar and insisted on
wearing the nipple formers thoughout the procedure. In relating the story
afterwards, she said that she cried and the baby cried for about the first
24 hours while they tried to get the breastfeeding right and after that they
were a happy breastfeeding couple - which lasted for in excess of 4 years.

One of the baby toiletry manufacturing companies created a very good
breastfeeding poster showing various feeding positions and they used this
mom to show that breastfeeding was possible with grossly inverted nipples
(her nipples were never visible after feeds and as she said, even in all
those 4 years, they never saw the light of day). This poster is
unfortunately out of print but can still be seen in many of the local
maternity facilities.

Who is to say that the nipple formers did or did not have any effect on the
state of her nipples, but she achieved a wonderful breastfeeding
relationship with her daughter and we call on her still for encouraging
other mothers who doubt their ability to breastfeed because of their
inverted nipples.

Rose Gauld RN RM IBCLC in an ever dry Cape Town anxiously awaiting the
arrival of grandchild no.1 who is taking his time to arrive.

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