11mth old rough while breastfeeding

[melissa.r]

Posting on behalf of my sister who has an 11 month old who is being quite rough while breastfeeding. He scratches, hits, pulls roughly off the nipple, wriggles around and is making my sisters nipples and breasts quite bruised and battered. As he feeds to sleep he often does this behaviour as self soothing when he goes off to sleep, some of this is quite common for this age group and it will pass but it is obviously problematic for my sister. I have suggested distraction (doesn't seem to work) and recently suggested that she pull him off the breast and say 'no hurts mummy' indicating this is not ok but my sister feels that he is too young for this and had reservations about this technique.
What are your thoughts and do you have any suggestions?

[JJJ&D'sMum]

I'm not sure if I can be of any help but I BF DD until she was 13 months old and at the age of 6 months she began to get rather rough with me due to teething. I took her off the breast and firmly told her 'No! You mustn't bite mummy, it hurts" and left her on my lap for a few minutes. Once I put her back on she didn't bite again till she was approximately 11-12 months old and I repeated the process. Babies may not understand everything we say but I'm sure that they understand specific tones of voice and can respond accordingly. I should add that I didn't feed DD to sleep....she self settled after her feeds.

Good luck for your sister.

[Hollywood]

DS does that too, and he's 16 months old. He doesn't always do it, sometimes he just twiddles with my hair or earrings, or a necklace if I happen to be wearing one. It certainly is a bit painful when he pinches me! I was chatting with ladies on the ABA forum and it seems like a LOT of BFing babies do the 'nipple tweaking' thing :o. The only time the nipple tweaking is a problem is when he does it hard (ouch :() or if I'm feeding him in public, in which case I keep just removing his hand).

As for pulling him off when he is rough, I suppose if it's really hurting her then that might help, I think he could be old enough to be taught that way. Otherwise, perhaps she could buy a breastfeeding necklace (the ABA sells them, they're full of beads and stuff for the babies to play with).