Poor Gwen Stefani. She's worried her 14-month old son Kingston is going to start biting during breastfeeding now that he's getting teeth. (Side note: he's just now getting teeth?) Well, kudos to Gwen for sticking with the breastfeeding this long, even though Rachael thinks you're crazy. Oh, and why am I even talking about Gwen Stefani? I mean, isn't that a job for Famecrawler? Why, yes it is, and they do it well, but today we're talking about biting. And this was my segue.
I had two biters. Not coincidentally, they were also the two who breastfed the longest. My daughter began biting at about 10 months, when she had both top teeth and bottom teeth. And my son, despite having no teeth at all until he was close to two, would use those little gums just to clamp down as hard as he could. Which was actually worse.
The strategy that worked with one didn't work with the other: gently breaking suction with a finger and removing my nipple from between her teeth while saying in a quiet voice, "Be gentle!" Her brother would have none of it and just clamped down harder. I'm pretty sure the quiet voice and gentle finger went out the window at that point, and he may have kept doing it just to hear me squeal (like the photo in Rachael's post).
What about you? Have a biter on hand? What did you do about it?
