What if I am still in pain at every breastfeed. Should I finally give up on the whole idea?

When you have reached your own personal threshold of ‘discomfort’ (as some breastfeeding devotees prefer to conservatively describe it), my controversial advice is to listen to the pleading of your body and give your nipples some time off to heal. Also, it is very difficult to relax an in-pain adrenaline-pumped body to enable the oxytocin milk let-down to successfully occur — well, not when you are enduring the searing pain of someone sucking on a bleeding, cracked and blistered part of your more delicate anatomy — plus your baby can end up stressed and tense from its frustration at trying to feed on a breast which is not generously releasing its milk. And that creates a vicious cycle.

This system, of giving one’s nipples a little vacation, has worked for me in the first week with all my (highly successfully) breastfed babes — and I believe was simply listening to my body