Lip blisters, babies, and breastfeeding
Did/does your baby have a blister on their lip from breastfeeding?
Lip blisters are pretty common for nursing babies. Many assume they’re a normal and expected part of feeding a baby but while a small blister that fades quickly could be a part of a normal lactation experience, extensive blistering, peeling, and persistent tissue damage on a baby’s lips tells us something is up that calls for more support.
Can you imagine having to deal with blisters on your lips that got worse every time you ate? If that was a normal side effect of eating, would you ever want to eat again?
Ok, so I probably would. I eat pizza even though I know it is going to give me heartburn but that’s a whole other issue.
These photos are of my baby’s lips at 3 days old. She had very chapped lips, a large blister on her top lip and cobblestone lips, sometimes called “milk blisters” or “nursing blisters.”
Ouch.
Ouch.
Such lips are often accepted as normal because they are so common.
I look at these photos and cringe, that must have been so painful! Blisters on her lips, tissue peeling, and cracked lips had to hurt my sweet baby.
In this case it was one indicator that something wasn’t functioning properly. Her lips were blistered and peeling from a poor latch, she was losing weight (some weight loss is normal- she lost more than 10% of her birth weight and since I had no IV fluids during labor that weight loss couldn’t be accounted for), and she struggled to stay awake long at the breast as it took too much energy for her to feed well. Her latch looked good from the outside but I could tell she couldn’t hold it for long and her tongue wasn’t positioned correctly on my breast.
It would have been easy to call her a lazy feeder but this wasn’t a character flaw, this behavior was communication of an underlying unmet need that needed to be addressed.
Sometimes blisters and chapped lips on breastfeeding newborns are an indication of there being a problem such as oral tethers such as tongue or lip ties. Lips blisters can be from Baby trying to grip the breast tissue with the lips because the tongue or lip is not functioning as it should to maintain suction at the breast.
When the lips are having to hold on to the breast when the tongue can’t maintain suction, babies tire more easily and milk transfer may be compromised. They may not be able to remove enough milk to make up for energy thy are expending for the feed and get so sleepy they can’t finish a full feed.
By themselves persistent and pervasive lip blisters are cause for concern but when they’re present with other signs such as incomplete feeds, difficulty latching, weight loss, clicking, milk leaking out sides of mouth, reflux, jaundice, persistent fussiness, falling asleep quickly during feeds, sleeping through fed times, and parental pain, lip blisters indicate that something more serious is going on and help is needed. See an experienced IBCLC to troubleshoot.
When the lips are having to hold on to the breast when the tongue can’t maintain suction, babies tire more easily and milk transfer may be compromised. They may not be able to remove enough milk to make up for energy thy are expending for the feed and get so sleepy they can’t finish a full feed.
By themselves persistent and pervasive lip blisters are cause for concern but when they’re present with other signs such as incomplete feeds, difficulty latching, weight loss, clicking, milk leaking out sides of mouth, reflux, jaundice, persistent fussiness, falling asleep quickly during feeds, sleeping through fed times, and parental pain, lip blisters indicate that something more serious is going on and help is needed. See an experienced IBCLC to troubleshoot.
In my baby’s case, the chapped lips and blisters were a result of a tongue and lip tie as well as some muscle weakness. We made the decision to have her ties revised with surgery at 4 days old and did exercises for her to heal and develop her muscles to improve her latch.
Lip blisters and chapped lips may be common but are worth a closer look with a breastfeeding helper such as an IBCLC.
Read more about the basics of tongue and lip tie here (Thanks to Melissa Cole, IBCLC at Luna Lactation and Wellness and Dr. Bobby Ghaheri MD).
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