biting?

Ok, so Sara is 14 months old and still bf-ing lots. Problem is she has
teeth (4 top and 3 bottom teeth) and she bites while she nurses.
She doesn't chomp down, it's just that there are now teeth where there
weren't any, so I don't know what to do about it. I don't want to wean
just yet, she's drinking from a sippy cup with a soft spout* sometimes
but doesn't drink much and also prefers to play with it to drinking from
it so she's not getting lots of fluid from the cup...

Any suggestions would be awesome, I really like nursing her but it's
getting to the point where I tense up just thinking about nursing and my
left boob (she mainly nurses on that side)) is kind of tender/sore,
which is no fun at all.

cu
nicole


*she does bite the spout to drink rather than sucking on it, so it might
also be a learned thing, but I'm not sure.

NL wrote:
Ok, so Sara is 14 months old and still bf-ing lots. Problem is she has
teeth (4 top and 3 bottom teeth) and she bites while she nurses.
She doesn't chomp down, it's just that there are now teeth where there
weren't any, so I don't know what to do about it. I don't want to wean
just yet, she's drinking from a sippy cup with a soft spout* sometimes
but doesn't drink much and also prefers to play with it to drinking from
it so she's not getting lots of fluid from the cup...


I've had trouble with mine biting while nursing after getting used to
biting a sippy cup spout. Would you be able to help her drink from a
small juice glass for a while instead of a spout and see if that helps?

--Betsy

betsy wrote:
NL wrote:
Ok, so Sara is 14 months old and still bf-ing lots. Problem is she has
teeth (4 top and 3 bottom teeth) and she bites while she nurses.
She doesn't chomp down, it's just that there are now teeth where there
weren't any, so I don't know what to do about it. I don't want to wean
just yet, she's drinking from a sippy cup with a soft spout* sometimes
but doesn't drink much and also prefers to play with it to drinking from
it so she's not getting lots of fluid from the cup...


I've had trouble with mine biting while nursing after getting used to
biting a sippy cup spout. Would you be able to help her drink from a
small juice glass for a while instead of a spout and see if that helps?

At this point I'm ready to stand on my head and wiggle my toes if that
helps ;-)
When she drinks from a glass most of the drink spills out, but since
she's covered in goo by the time she's done eating (she insists on
feeding herself and turns her head away when I try to feed her...
Really, I don't know where she got that from, I know I still have all my
stubborn!) some more liquid won't make much of a difference ;-)

thanks
nicole

"NL" wrote in message
...
Ok, so Sara is 14 months old and still bf-ing lots. Problem is she has
teeth (4 top and 3 bottom teeth) and she bites while she nurses.
She doesn't chomp down, it's just that there are now teeth where there
weren't any, so I don't know what to do about it. I don't want to wean
just yet, she's drinking from a sippy cup with a soft spout* sometimes
but doesn't drink much and also prefers to play with it to drinking from
it so she's not getting lots of fluid from the cup...

Any suggestions would be awesome, I really like nursing her but it's
getting to the point where I tense up just thinking about nursing and my
left boob (she mainly nurses on that side)) is kind of tender/sore,
which is no fun at all.

cu
nicole


*she does bite the spout to drink rather than sucking on it, so it might
also be a learned thing, but I'm not sure.

Heh... DD2 did this for a very, VERY short while, but it was when she was
about 7ish months old... I remember because the first time she chomped down
on me was when I was nursing her outside on the sidelines of DS' soccer game

At 7 months, though, DD2 was not eating or drinking anything other than
breast milk. She had outwardly refused a bottle of EBM from day 1... She
didn't even get the hang of the baby cereals until about 9 or so months old
and couldn't figure out any type of sippy cup, period. She was about a year
when she figured out a sippy cup type with a straw, though.
When she first bit me, it hurt quite a bit - intentional or not, biting
HURTS. The first time was like a shock to my system and I did react. I
know it's hard, believe me I know, but a reaction from you isn't good. They
can find it funny to see a reaction from you. Screaming, shouting,
hollering, laughing, giggling, smiling... any positive or negative reaction
can be a bad thing. What I did for the biting was simple, and although it
is hard to follow through with, it did work for me. When she'd bite down,
I'd unlatch her, put her down on the floor and say we're done for now. I
doubt they understand much - even at 14 months - about much, but I'd bet
that she DOES understand "we're done" if you take her off and put her down.
I would simply do that - unlatch her, put her down, tell her biting hurts
without making a big production of it, and say we'll try again later. Next
time it happened, I'd just repeat the above... Take off, put down, say
biting hurts/no biting, we'll try again later. It actually didn't take DD2
very long to figure it out, even at around 7ish months.
The great thing is that teeth are NOT needed for nursing. I believe it's
just the tongue and roof of the mouth and all that, not the teeth. It's a
sucking motion, not a biting or anything like that. DD2 has a full mouth of
chompers now at 2, and although she fully self-weaned around the end of
August, almost exactly 20 months old to the day, she did not ever bite after
we had the little biting episode long time ago. She'd try - I'd see her
open her mouth and nipple in teeth and smile at me, and a quick reminder was
all it took. She drew blood once around the soccer game time and that was
that. The few other times back then that she did bite DID hurt, and hurt a
lot, but she only chomped down real hard and drew some small amount of blood
the one time.
Biting hurts like crazy, or can hurt like crazy, so it's one of those things
that probably should be put to a stop sooner than later.
Try the taking her off and putting her down on the floor beside you idea if
you haven't yet. It probably won't fix the problem over night, but she
probably will get the idea fairly quickly!

Kat wrote:
snip
Biting hurts like crazy, or can hurt like crazy, so it's one of those things
that probably should be put to a stop sooner than later.
Try the taking her off and putting her down on the floor beside you idea if
you haven't yet. It probably won't fix the problem over night, but she
probably will get the idea fairly quickly!

I think I figured it out... She wasn't biting/chomping down at all, she
just started closing her mouth so the teeth were rubbing against the
nipple and the pain was actually because the skin had split a tiny
little bit, just the top layer and only a fraction of a millimeter but
enough to sting/burn when she was nursing. I quit the sippy cup and
about a week later it was all better. I did start her on the Avent
bottle with a 4 hole nipple now and it seems to not cause problems but
she's not drinking a lot from the bottle which may be because it's still
too slow flowing for her. I may need to investigate into different
nipples further.
She also caught her first cold this weekend so I'm totally not stressing
the bottle at all I'd prefer her to nurse and get more antibodies that
way ;-)

Thanks for everyones input!
nicole

I think I figured it out... She wasn't biting/chomping down at all, she just started closing her mouth so the teeth were rubbing against the nipple and the pain was actually because the skin had split a tiny little bit, just the top layer and only a fraction of a millimeter but enough to sting/burn when she was nursing.

I think I figured it out... She wasn't biting/chomping down at all, she just started closing her mouth so the teeth were rubbing against the nipple and the pain was actually because the skin had split a tiny little bit, just the top layer and only a fraction of a millimeter but enough to sting/burn when she was nursing.