Nipple Damage Healing
With nipple damage, prevention is KEY. If your latch is deep and effective, and your baby's does not have any restrictive oral anatomy, you should be able to avoid nipple damage. Nipple pain and damage is typically caused from a shallow latch, so check out deep latch techniques in our next post!
It is absolutely untrue that your nipples need a period of time to "roughen" or "toughen" up. A deep, effective latch will bring the nipple far enough into the infant's mouth to protect the nipple and allow for better milk transfer. If you're experiencing pain, likely the nipple is too close to the gum line or rubbing against the hard palate which not only causes the pain and damage, but is literally causing your infant to clamp down on the "straw" it is essentially drinking from, resulting in decreased milk removal. Again, this is as long as your infant does not have TOTs (tethered oral tissue) or other oral/physical anatomy issues.
If your nipple skin is open for any reason (healing milk bleb, shallow latch, etc.), here are some tips for healing and caring for your nipples while lactating. This is from KellyMom.com, this site is an AMAZING resource, not affiliated with QAHLS. It is well researched and reliably evidence based.
https://kellymom.com/bf/concer...
Here are some natural treatment options for nursing moms, organized by problem, again from KellyMom.com: