Victoria, I have a personal experience that may at least give you one idea of something to try. I developed nipple cracks with my fifth child, after having had a terrible bout with thrush, followed by a bout with dermatitis, due to an allergic reaction to the medication I used for the thrush. I got the other symptoms under control, but the deep cracks at the base of my nipples just would not heal. They would start to stick together in between nursings, but always rip open again, as soon as he latched on. I even tried using just one breast for 48 hours, doing only hand expression on the other, in order to avoid putting any tension on that crack. It looked pretty well healed after that, but tore open again, as soon as Joseph latched on. What I finally found that helped was taking large amounts of vitamins A and E. I had suspected that, after losing my gall bladder, I was not absorbing fat soluble vitamins properly. The cracks healed in just days after I started taking the extra A and E. However, I had to keep taking the vitamins, or the same cracks would start to open up again. That was the case for the three additional years that I was nursing. Of course, this is just one case, but maybe that will give you an idea. Even if this mom's nipple cracks do not hurt, I think it would be important to try to get rid of them, since they would certainly increase the likelihood of infection. Darillyn _________________________________________________________________ Enjoy MSN 8 patented spam control and more with MSN 8 Dial-up Internet Service. Try it FREE for one month! http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] 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