<Mary Zeimer's work really suggests that sore nipples are fairly ubiquitous and peak sometime around day 5.> With all due respect to you, Barbara, (and I do have the utmost respect!) I must confess that Mary Zeimer's article "pushed my button". I hate to see it quoted as a reference. The one great thing I remember thinking about the article was that she avoided using the word "sore", using specific descriptive terms in the whole thing. (This has long been a pet peeve of mine, since Webster defines "sore" as both an adjective meaning "tender" and a noun meaning "wound", and the grammatical distinction gets lost in everyday usage. While damaged nipples are quite likely to be tender, undamaged nipples can be tender too, and too often, when the word "sore" is used without further investigation, wound care advice is often given where positioning and other advice would be much more to the point.) She made the disclaimer that she only made observations. She and her co-researchers had no input as to the hospital routines. If I remember correctly, there was initial delay in feeding, supplement in the nursery at least some nights, etc., and the average # of feedings in 24 hours was only 6-7 or so. I remember I had a strong desire (which unfortunately I never acted upon) to write a letter to the editor that a more likely conclusion to result from this study was that when such a routine is used, 100% occurrence of damaged nipples can be predicted. I still harbor the hope that somewhere there is research from an institution of Baby-Friendly status to prove that nipple damage is NOT UBUQUITIOUS! And better yet, that neither is nipple tenderness, though I suspect we have a long way to go. Jean ***************** K. Jean Cotterman RNC, IBCLC Dayton, Ohio USA *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html