Nobody warned me about the first week.
Not the cluster feeding. Not the engorgement. Not the moment I would sit in the dark at 3am wondering if my baby was getting enough milk.
Everyone talks about breastfeeding like it either works or it doesn’t.
What nobody tells you is that the first week is often a crash course in sore nipples, second-guessing yourself, and learning to trust a process that feels anything but natural.
This is the post I needed during those first seven days.
And if you’re in the middle of it right now, I hope it helps you feel a little less alone.
Before we get into the day-by-day experience, these are the products that genuinely helped me survive week one.
⚠️ Affiliate disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
The 5 products that got me through the first week
If you’re reading this from a hospital bed, a nursery chair, or the middle of a cluster-feeding marathon, these are the items I’d order first:
- Silverettes
- Lansinoh Lanolin Nipple Cream
- Lansinoh Breast Therapy Pads
- Haakaa Silicone Breast Pump
- A supportive nursing pillow
If you are in a hurry, you can check out my complete list of breastfeeding essentials on Amazon here
Now let’s talk about what the first week actually looked like.
Day 1 — the first latch
A nurse helped me with the very first latch and I am genuinely glad she was there.
Because the mechanics of it — how to hold a newborn who is smaller and more fragile-feeling than anything you have ever held, how to position her without feeling like you might accidentally squish her, how to get enough of the breast in her mouth — none of that is intuitive when you are holding your baby for the first time.
It didn’t feel right immediately. There was discomfort. I kept checking that her airways were clear — her little nose, her chin — convinced that I was somehow obstructing her even when I clearly wasn’t. That fear took about a day to ease.
By day two something shifted. I found a position that worked for both of us. She settled into it. I relaxed slightly. And I started to understand that she was not as fragile as I was treating her — that her body knew how to do this even when mine wasn’t sure yet.
What helped on day one: having a nurse present for the first latch. If you are in hospital, ask. If you are at home with a midwife, ask her to stay through the first feed. The first latch is not the moment to figure it out alone.
Day 2–3 — colostrum, and the thing nobody mentions enough
In the first two to three days, before your milk comes in, you produce colostrum. It is thick, golden, and comes in small amounts — sometimes just drops.
This is the part where most first-time mamas panic, because it looks like almost nothing. Her stomach is the size of a marble. Colostrum is exactly what she needs. The drops are enough.
Then around day three, the milk comes in. And when it does — you know.
My breasts swelled overnight. They were hard, hot, and painful to touch in a way I had not expected. The engorgement was real, and it was uncomfortable enough that I was actually scared to feed — which is exactly the wrong response, because feeding is what helps.
The initial let-down was a sharp, hot pang that took my breath away for the first few seconds of each feed. And then it passed, and feeding itself was fine. That distinction — sharp pain at let-down that eases, versus pain that persists throughout — is important. The former is engorgement and let-down adjusting. The latter is worth getting checked.
What helped with engorgement: I used breast therapy pads — the kind you can warm up and use as a compress. The heat before a feed helped soften the breast enough to make the latch easier and took the edge off the soreness between feeds. Cold compresses after feeds helped with the swelling. Both made those days manageable when they would otherwise have felt impossible.
These are small things that nobody puts at the top of the list. They should be.
Days 3–5 — the nipple reality
Raw nipples in the first week are real. I want to say that plainly because I think it gets softened in most breastfeeding content and then mamas are blindsided by how much it actually hurts.
The skin on your nipples has never experienced this before. Even with a good latch — and ours was checked — the first days of feeding are an adjustment that your body has to go through physically. The soreness is normal. The rawness is common. And it does get better, but in the meantime you need to protect and heal the skin between every single feed.
My holy grail combination was three things used together:
Lansinoh HPA Lanolin Nipple Cream — applied after every feed without wiping off before the next one. Completely baby-safe. Creates a barrier that stops further damage from the air and friction between feeds.
Earth Mama Organic Nipple Butter — deeply moisturising and soothing in a different way to lanolin. I alternated between the two depending on how the skin felt. The Earth Mama felt more like healing; the Lansinoh felt more like protection. I came to think of them as doing different jobs on the same nipple.
Silverette silver cups — worn between feeds. Silver has natural antimicrobial properties and the cups protect the nipple from any contact with fabric, which in those early raw days matters more than you’d think. I cannot overstate how much difference these made between feeds.
Use all three from day one. Not when it hurts. Before it hurts. Prevention in this case is significantly easier than recovery.
Days 5–7 — cluster feeding and the confidence crisis
This was the part that nearly broke me.
Not physically.
Mentally.
By day five she was feeding constantly. On and off for hours every evening. I would finish a feed, settle her, sit down for what felt like thirty seconds, and she would want to feed again.
And somewhere during those evenings a thought started repeating itself:
Maybe she’s still hungry.
Maybe I’m not making enough.
Maybe my milk isn’t coming in properly.
Nobody had warned me how convincing those thoughts would sound at 9pm after a day of feeding.
What changed everything — practically and psychologically — was the Haakaa silicone pump.
The Haakaa gave me reassurance when I needed it most
Around the middle of the first week, I started using a Haakaa on the opposite side while nursing.
I attached it to the opposite breast during feeds and one evening I looked down and saw it filling.
There it was.
Visible proof that my body was doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing.
The milk wasn’t really the point.
What surprised me was how much calmer I felt.
I wasn’t collecting milk.
I was collecting reassurance.
Every drop sitting in that Haakaa was evidence that my body was working when my anxiety was telling me it wasn’t.
That single moment quieted more doubt than any amount of reassurance from other people could have.
It also built a small freezer stash without any additional pumping sessions, which in the first week when you have no spare time or energy is the only way a stash gets built.
The feeding station — your single most important setup
All of this — the engorgement, the cluster feeds, the soreness, the Haakaa, the nipple cream — happens while you are sitting somewhere. For hours. Repeatedly.
Set up your feeding station before she arrives. Water — a large insulated bottle with a straw so you can drink one-handed. Snacks you can eat with one hand. Nipple cream within reach. Burp cloths stacked. Phone charger plugged in.
I have a full post on exactly how to set up the feeding station — what goes where and why — here. If you haven’t read it yet, read it before the baby comes.
The nursing pillow — not optional, not a luxury
The nursing pillow — the thing my shoulders still thank me for
Around day four my shoulders started hurting.
Not a little.
The kind of aching that comes from holding a tiny person in exactly the same position for hours every day.
I realised I was using my arms to support her entire weight through every feed.
The nursing pillow changed that immediately.
Instead of bringing my body down to the baby, it brought the baby up to me.
The difference in comfort was instant.
I used the Boppy Original Nursing Pillow at every feed for months afterwards. By the second week, reaching for it had become automatic.
When to call a lactation consultant
If any of this is happening, call — do not wait:
- Pain that persists throughout the entire feed, not just at let-down
- Nipple pain that is getting worse after day five rather than better
- Baby losing more than 10% of birth weight or not back to birth weight by day fourteen
- Fewer than six wet nappies per day after day five
- Engorgement that doesn’t ease with feeding or compression
- You are not sure whether what you’re experiencing is normal
You do not have to be in crisis to call a lactation consultant. A single appointment can resolve in one hour what weeks of uncertainty and pain cannot resolve alone. Find an IBCLC near you at ilca.org.
Day 7 — where I was
By the end of the first week I was a different person than I had been on day one.
Not expert. Not effortless. But more in control. More aware of what my body was doing and why. The knowledge had accumulated — every feed teaching me something the one before hadn’t.
The confidence I felt on day seven compared to day one was not because breastfeeding had become easy. It was because I understood it better. And understanding — the biology, the cluster feeding, the engorgement — made every hard moment feel manageable.
That is the thing I most want to give you with this post. Not a perfect first week. But enough understanding that when the hard moments come, you know what they mean and you know they pass.
You will find your position. She will find her latch. Your body will calibrate. It takes a week to begin to feel like something you are doing together rather than something happening to you.
Stay with it if you can. And if you can’t — that is okay too. You are not your feeding method. You are her mother.
If you are in week one right now and something doesn’t feel right, or you just need someone to tell you you’re doing fine — I’m at mama-rooted.com/contact. I mean it when I say I’m here.
Lots of love,
Mama Rooted
📌 Save this for any mama in her first week of breastfeeding who needs the honest version. Lots of love, Mama Rooted.
Also on Mama Rooted:
My milk supply dropped and I thought I was failing — what actually happened
The postpartum feeding station — everything within arm’s reach before you sit down
I breastfed for two years — the honest truth about all of it
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