As a physician who had 3 months of breast-feeding problems due to an undiagnosed case of Raynaud’s, I found out that this is NOT an uncommon problem but severely underdiagnosed, affecting up to 20% of all women of childbearing age and often times is misdiagnosed as a yeast infection (at times the redness and pain linger for up to 30 minutes later). Just so you know, it took 3 lactation consultants to finally find some help; I thought my kid just would never get the hang of this. My OB (who breastfeed two children) was not aware of this, either.
One day of nifedipine and breastfeeding went from 1-1.5 hours of discomfort per session to 15-30 minutes of pleasantry. #2 is pending and I certainly will ask for nifedipine in the delivery room!
Just feedback from the trenches.
Anonymous
I think my wife had this. She has Raynaud’s and had a lot of discomfort breastfeeding. She worked with newborns and I was a resident at the time. We never heard of this.
