"Breastfeeding support"

I'm a first-time mother and wanted to breastfeed from the outset. As soon as I was home with baby, I began to experience pain with feeding – pain as bad as childbirth itself, so that by day 2 I was already thinking of giving up and pumping/expressing rather than breastfeeding. 

I mentioned the pain to my midwife, who immediately referred me to the breastfeeding clinic at Forth Valley Royal Hospital.  Gail and her team of breastfeeding support workers spent the next 4 weeks helping me with positioning and attachment to eliminate the pain, explained how to use nipple shields (which I'd never heard of and is not mentioned in the NHS literature) and observed that my baby had a tongue tie that hindered optimal feeding.

Once the tongue tie was divided, the breastfeeding team helped me relearn how to nurse, and I am now able to breastfeed my baby without any pain at all.