>Clover leaf - I know that there have to be mothers who have truly defective
>nipples but we must always give hope and that we breastfeed and not nipple
>feed.  The baby moulds a 'teat' out of the breast, I know that the nipples
>have enormous importance, nerve endings, eliciting rooting reflex etc, etc,
>but on a very basic level they are just where the milk comes out.

I wrote last year about a mom I worked with 4 years ago who had NO
nipples--nothing that would stick out. They weren't inverted; they were just
not there.  There were ductal openings, but no nipple tissue.  Well, it took
little baby boy a while to get the hang of this all, but he did after 6
weeks of heroic work on the part of mom (and him too). The last time I
talked to mom (about 3 months ago) he was still nursing.  People would ask
her how long she was going to nurse that baby and her reply was, "As long as
I want to!!"

I learned a lot with this case.  I feel that he would have learned to feed
at her breast sooner if she had done only cup feeding from the beginning.  I
had just learned about it then and we had used tube and finger-feeding.  I
now believe that her finger was too dissimilar to her breast. He did learn
to cup feed very well and she stopped any other kind of feeding until he
went to the breast.

You know, she got "sore nipples" after he was at the breast, because he
wasn't drawing the flat front of her breast far enough back.  She would feed
one side until it was too sore to use, then switch for a couple of days to
the other.  After a while this was no longer a problem.

If I ever wanted to award a medal to a mom it was this one.

Of course, I am just guessing that the cup would have hastened his going to
breast.  There is no one way that guarantees rapid results. We are dealing
with a little person here and not just a mouth and a breast. But I do
believe that the alternative method is best that effectively feeds the baby
and is as similar to mom's breast as possible.

Patricia Gima, IBCLC
Milwaukee

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