Biting
RBXChas
Posts: 2,708 Member
Yes, biting.
I've been bitten hard more times than I can count since Thursday or Friday (today is Sunday). Thankfully my baby has never broken the skin, but OW! On top of that he's Mr. Distracto almost every time he nurses. (Pre-bedtime feeding is usually calm.) I can nurse him in a dark, quiet room, and he'll find something to keep him pulling his head away and sometimes biting me in the process. Sometimes I can tell he's just playing, too.
The distraction thing has been an issue for about the past month, but the biting is new. I've been bitten inadvertently in the past, but in the past few days it's been a regular thing. I yell, "OW!" more out of pain/surprise than anything else, and he will stop, but it doesn't seem to faze him enough to quit with the biting. I do the same thing when he unexpectedly pulls my hair to the point of being painful, so I think he thinks it's part of playing.
He'll be 11 months old on the 23rd, and I plan on weaning around a year. I'm considering stopping daytime feeds altogether and just leaving morning and bedtime, then dropping morning, then bedtime to fully wean him over the next month. He's not that bad with the biting/distraction first thing in the morning, and, like I said, bedtime is easy peasy, so it's making me want to drop daytime feeds ASAP before he breaks the skin and causes long-term pain and possibly infection. He drinks breastmilk from a straw cup just fine and doesn't seem to care about nursing when there's so much fun stuff to do/look at during the day, so I don't think he'd miss nursing during the day. I've got enough frozen stash to last us for the next month.
Does anyone have any advice for me? Thank you!
I've been bitten hard more times than I can count since Thursday or Friday (today is Sunday). Thankfully my baby has never broken the skin, but OW! On top of that he's Mr. Distracto almost every time he nurses. (Pre-bedtime feeding is usually calm.) I can nurse him in a dark, quiet room, and he'll find something to keep him pulling his head away and sometimes biting me in the process. Sometimes I can tell he's just playing, too.
The distraction thing has been an issue for about the past month, but the biting is new. I've been bitten inadvertently in the past, but in the past few days it's been a regular thing. I yell, "OW!" more out of pain/surprise than anything else, and he will stop, but it doesn't seem to faze him enough to quit with the biting. I do the same thing when he unexpectedly pulls my hair to the point of being painful, so I think he thinks it's part of playing.
He'll be 11 months old on the 23rd, and I plan on weaning around a year. I'm considering stopping daytime feeds altogether and just leaving morning and bedtime, then dropping morning, then bedtime to fully wean him over the next month. He's not that bad with the biting/distraction first thing in the morning, and, like I said, bedtime is easy peasy, so it's making me want to drop daytime feeds ASAP before he breaks the skin and causes long-term pain and possibly infection. He drinks breastmilk from a straw cup just fine and doesn't seem to care about nursing when there's so much fun stuff to do/look at during the day, so I don't think he'd miss nursing during the day. I've got enough frozen stash to last us for the next month.
Does anyone have any advice for me? Thank you!
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Replies
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I don't have personal advice about the biting since my baby doesn't have teeth yet (luckily), but I have heard that pressing the face up against the breast until baby releases is a good way. They can't get a good latch and it forces them to release
Good luck!0 -
The best way to deal with biting is hard unfortunately - do your best not to react other than putting baby down and saying "We don't bite Mommy." It's hard though because it does hurt so inadvertantly yelling "ow" is easy to do. The other thing that comes to mind is that if he's actually latched the way their mouths have to be prevents biting, so for him to bite he's unlatching first - maybe taking him off as soon as you feel his latch change?0
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Thanks for the suggestions so far! He is definitely unlatching and then biting, but unlatching is a regular thing nowadays. I guess I need to keep a hand free to jump in there and keep him from biting as he unlatches.
I forgot to add earlier that he's got another tooth breaking through, so I don't know if there's a connection there.
Maybe I need to address the distraction issue, though I'm not sure what more I can do aside from nursing him in a dark, quiet room!0 -
We went through a biting phase a couple months ago. When he bit me I would look at him and say, "no, no" and I would set him down on the floor. Eventually he got the memo that if he bit mom then nursing time was over. I also had someone tell me that if you flick baby gently in the cheek after a bite that they will stop. I never tried that.0
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We went through a biting phase a couple months ago. When he bit me I would look at him and say, "no, no" and I would set him down on the floor. Eventually he got the memo that if he bit mom then nursing time was over. I also had someone tell me that if you flick baby gently in the cheek after a bite that they will stop. I never tried that.
Thank you! He does stop in an immediate sense; it's the biting in general that I need to curb.
The good news is that I haven't been bitten since Sunday
Tomorrow he turns 11 months old, so we've only got a month to go! Hopefully he won't hurt me in the meantime! He's also still Mr. Distracto, but I think that's just how it is at this age. (My older son was supplemented, then FF, so this is really my first real experience with BFing an older baby and with weaning.)
Now to think about dropping a feed and trading it out for frozen stuff...0 -
That's great news! Our biting phase didn't last long, but it was long enough to make me consider stopping breastfeeding for a second. My son is going to be 1 in a couple weeks and I have no idea about weaning, introducing cow's milk, etc.0
