You've heard it so many times it's stopped meaning anything: just get a good latch. Everyone says it. The midwife, the leaflet, every video you scroll through. And still you're sitting there with your baby at the breast and it simply won't come together. You can see the perfect picture on the screen, but at your own breast you can't make it happen. That isn't because you're not trying. It's because nobody has actually shown you what a good mouthful looks like.
There's usually one misunderstanding underneath it all. You think your baby is meant to suck on the nipple. That the little mouth barely opens wide enough to take any of your areola, and all your baby has hold of is the nipple. That's exactly the problem, because a deep latch isn't about the nipple at all. Your baby needs to take a big mouthful of your areola, with the nipple sitting deep at the back of the mouth, well away from the gums. As long as you keep aiming at the nipple, you'll keep turning the wrong dial.
This piece gives you what most sites skip. Not the theory one more time, but the visible, checkable proof: what a deep mouthful looks like while you're feeding, how to steer it yourself and, most important of all, how to read your own nipple after a feed to know whether it was right. Plus the signs of a shallow latch you'll now learn to spot, and the point at which you ring a lactation consultant or get a tongue-tie checked.
Short answer. A deep latch means your baby takes a big mouthful of areola, not just the nipple. You recognise it while you feed by a wide-open mouth (the chin pressed into your breast, the nose free), lips that curl outward, and more areola showing above the mouth than below. And you check it afterwards: take your baby off and look at your nipple. Round and even means it was deep. Flattened, lipstick-shaped, with a slanted crease or squeezed white means it was shallow, and your nipple was pressed against the hard palate. If it hurts at every feed, you hear little clicking sounds, or your nipple keeps coming back misshapen, take your baby off and latch on again. If the pain stays or you get cracks, ring a lactation consultant or your GP and have a tongue-tie checked too.
Why "just get a good latch" tells you so little
Let's be honest about where it goes wrong. The advice isn't wrong, it's just empty. Get a good latch is an outcome, not an action. It's like someone saying: make sure you cycle well. You still don't know what your hands and your weight are supposed to do. So you watch video after video, you can spot the perfect picture, but at your own breast it never turns into something you can actually do.
Then the nipple misunderstanding lands on top. A lot of mothers instinctively aim at the nipple: baby straight in front of the nipple, mouth around it, done. But then your baby sucks on the very spot that copes with it worst, and takes too little of the areola along. The result is a shallow mouthful that hurts and moves too little milk. The words mothers use give it away: the mouth barely opens wide enough to get any of the areola, only the nipple. That's not a lack of effort. It's the wrong target.
There's another clash, in the norm you were handed: breastfeeding shouldn't hurt at all. Plenty of mothers simply find that doesn't square with their own experience. We'll come back to that further down. For now it's enough to know this: the first place to look is almost never your nipple shape or your skin, but the mouthful. And that's something you can see and change. In pain-free feeding and what to check first you work through the wider check if the pain stays.
The self-check the videos don't give you: read your nipple after a feed
This is the one anchor of this article, so remember it even if you forget the rest. While you're feeding there's very little you can judge, because mostly you're looking at the back of your baby's head. The useful proof only comes once your baby lets go and you look at your own nipple. It takes two seconds and it's free.
A nipple that latched deep comes out round and even, roughly the same shape as before, stretched a little at most. A nipple that sat shallow in the mouth comes out different. Flattened with a slanted crease down one side. In the shape of a new lipstick, with a line across it as though a slanted tip has been pinched onto it. Or drained white and squeezed in. That misshaping means your nipple was pressed against the hard palate instead of lying deep and safe at the back. This is exactly the sign mothers pass round to each other on forums, often only after weeks of pain, when nobody had shown it to them beforehand.
Why this is such a relief: it takes the judgement out of your feelings and puts it onto something you can see. You no longer have to guess whether your skin is just sensitive. You look at the shape. If your nipple comes out misshapen or pale, you know straight away where to start, and that it isn't your fault.
What a deep latch looks like while you feed
Now for the side you can see during the feed. A deep latch has a few recognisable signs, and together they tell you whether your baby has enough areola on board.
- A wide-open mouth. Your baby opens wide, like a big yawn. Only then does he come onto the breast. A small pursed mouth almost always takes too little.
- More areola above than below. Look at the edge of the areola. With a deep mouthful you see more areola above the top lip than below the bottom lip. That's called an asymmetric latch: the bottom lip lands well below the nipple, the nipple points up towards the roof of the mouth.
- The chin presses into your breast, the nose is free. The head tilts back a little so the chin touches your breast first and the nose stays just clear. Your baby latches, in effect, from below.
- Lips that curl outward. Top and bottom lip sit open like a fish mouth, not rolled in. If you need to, you can gently ease the bottom lip out.
- Full, round cheeks. The cheeks fill out during the feed. If you see them being sucked in or forming little dimples, there's too little suction and the mouthful is too shallow.
- A calm, deep rhythm with swallowing. After the first quick sucks you hear steady, regular swallowing. If you want to be sure your baby is getting enough that way, look at the signs your baby is getting enough milk.
How to steer it: take off and latch on again
Here's the move that makes the difference, and exactly what mothers tell each other: don't accept a bad mouthful. If latching on feels wrong, or your nipple comes back misshapen, take your baby off and latch on again. Better to start over three times than to sit through a whole feed on a shallow mouthful. Having to take off a few times in the early days is normal, not a sign you're doing something wrong.
Never take your baby off by pulling straight away, because then you're pulling on a nipple that's still clamped. Break the suction first: slide a clean little finger into the corner of the mouth until you feel the suck release, and only then take off.
This is how you build a deeper mouthful:
- Tummy to tummy. Lay your baby on his side, turned fully towards you, tummy against you. That way the head doesn't have to twist to reach the breast.
- Nose opposite the nipple. Position your baby so the nose (not the mouth) is opposite your nipple. That makes him reach up, and the head tilts back on its own.
- Wait for the wide-open mouth. Tickle your nipple across the top lip and wait until the mouth opens really wide, like a yawn. Don't latch on before that.
- Move your baby to the breast, not the breast to your baby. At that moment bring your baby to you quickly and decisively, chin first. Don't lean forward towards the mouth.
- Aim asymmetrically. Aim so the bottom lip lands well below the nipple and the nipple points up towards the roof of the mouth. Then it sits deeper.
If latching on won't work at all in the first days, and it sometimes takes an hour, you're in the phase where a lot of mothers struggle. In the first days as your milk comes in you can read what's normal in those days and when it eases off on its own.
The signs of a shallow latch you'll now learn to spot
Most mothers only get told about these signs by another mother, far too late. Here they are, lined up, so you spot them straight away:
- Pain that lasts the whole feed. Not a short tug as your baby latches on that then eases away, but a lingering, pinching or burning feeling, sometimes described as a nipple being gnawed off. That's the clearest sign.
- Little clicking sounds. A click or clack while feeding means your baby keeps losing the suction because the mouthful is too shallow. Some mothers compare it to a cuckoo clock. This clicking often goes hand in hand with a tongue-tie.
- Sucked-in or dimpled cheeks. Cheeks that pull inward instead of staying full and round point to too little suction.
- A nipple that comes back flat, pinched or lipstick-shaped. The sign from the self-check above. If you see that slanted crease or white line, your nipple was pressed against the hard palate.
- Letting go, latching again, feeding restlessly. A baby who keeps failing to get a proper hold of the nipple and keeps letting go is often on a mouthful that doesn't hold.
One or two of these on their own don't mean panic just yet. But if you see pain plus clicking plus a misshapen nipple together, that's no coincidence. Then the mouthful is too shallow, and sometimes there's a tongue-tie underneath it.
"Breastfeeding shouldn't hurt": the line that keeps you going on a bad mouthful
This myth deserves its own heading, because it does a lot of damage. If you believe it should never hurt, you're left with two bad options: thinking you're the one ruining it, or thinking you're just too sensitive. Both keep you stuck on a bad mouthful.
Here's the honest nuance. Some tenderness as your baby latches on can happen in the first days, and it can ease off within the first week or so. But pain that lasts the whole feed, nipples that crack or bleed, or a nipple that keeps coming back misshapen, that's something else. That isn't a price you're meant to pay, it's a signal that something about the mouthful, or something else, needs adjusting. The NHS and the breastfeeding charities all come down in the same place.
So if someone tells you it shouldn't hurt at all and you feel that it does, you're not lying and you're not making a fuss. You've got a clue in your hands. Use it to steer the mouthful, and speak up if steering isn't enough.
When to ring a lactation consultant and get a tongue-tie checked
Here's the line, because this is exactly what mothers let themselves reach far too late. You don't have to wait until it feels bad enough. Get in touch with a lactation consultant or your GP if you have one or more of these signs:
- Pain that doesn't settle after a few days of adjusting, or that you feel the whole feed through. Adjusting the mouthful should make a difference within a few feeds; if it stays just as bad, get it looked at.
- Cracked, split or bleeding nipples. Those want looking at, rather than you carrying on feeding on them for days, because they're also a way in for bacteria.
- Clicking sounds plus a nipple that comes back flat or pinched. This combination often points to a tongue-tie or a high palate. A tongue-tie is a tight little band of tissue under the tongue, sometimes further back (posterior) and then hard to see, which stops your baby lifting the tongue far enough to hold the nipple in place.
- A baby who leaves the mouth hanging open, can't hold a dummy, or has a lot of tension in the body. Those are extra clues a lactation consultant takes into account when assessing the tongue.
A tongue-tie isn't something you judge yourself. A lactation consultant (IBCLC), your GP or your midwife looks at the tongue and at how your baby feeds, because not every tongue-tie causes problems and not every tongue-tie needs dividing. And one more important thing: if you were told earlier that your latch is fine while the pain carries on, a second opinion is justified. A posterior tongue-tie in particular is easily missed on a first look. You're allowed to keep pushing until the pain has an explanation.
In practical terms, where to go. In the UK, your health visitor or your local NHS infant feeding team can watch a feed with you in the early weeks, and your midwife can help while she's still involved. A lactation consultant (IBCLC) is worth her weight in gold for going through the latch together, and you can find a private one through the Lactation Consultants of Great Britain (LCGB) directory. For the day-to-day questions the National Breastfeeding Helpline (0300 100 0212) is there. If you get a fever with a red, warm, painful patch in your breast and a fluey feeling, that doesn't fit a latch problem but points to mastitis, and then you ring your GP straight away, or NHS 111 out of hours. Not sure whether it's worth a phone call? It is. There's no breast question too small to ask.
Gentle support while you get the hang of the mouthful
In these first weeks your body is asking a lot of you at once. You're practising the mouthful, your nipples are sore or damaged, and between feeds your let-down reflex kicks in, so you leak more often than you'd like. Soft, dry support doesn't fix the latch, that's for a deeper mouthful and, where needed, your lactation consultant or GP. But it does make the days more bearable.
Our nursing bra is wireless and knitted from a soft, giving fabric that holds your breast in place without pressing hard anywhere, with a clip that opens one-handed so you can latch on quickly without fuss, even in the middle of the night. It's made from an OEKO-TEX Class I certified fabric (certificate number 11-36224), the strictest category for textiles that come against a baby's skin. The absorbent layer holds up to 30 ml per cup, so your shirt stays dry when you leak a little between feeds. If you'd rather have everything on latching and feeding in one place first, go to the overview of latching and feeding. And you can see the bra itself here: see the nursing bra.
Frequently asked questions about latching and a deep latch
Should my baby suck on the nipple or on the areola?
On the areola, not the nipple. With a deep latch your baby takes a big mouthful of your areola and the nipple sits deep at the back of the mouth, well away from the gums. If your baby sucks only on the nipple, it hurts and he gets too little milk. So aim asymmetrically, so more areola stays visible above the mouth than below it.
How do I know for sure whether my baby latched deep enough?
The most reliable check you do after the feed: look at your nipple. If it comes back round and even, the mouthful was deep. If it comes back flattened, squeezed white or lipstick-shaped, it was pressed against the hard palate and the latch was too shallow. While you feed, watch for a wide-open mouth, outward-curled lips and full cheeks.
Why do I hear clicking sounds when my baby feeds?
A click or clack usually means your baby keeps losing the suction because the mouthful is too shallow. Try taking off first and latching on again, deeper. If the clicking carries on together with pain or a misshapen nipple, have a lactation consultant or your GP check for a tongue-tie, because that's a common cause.
My latch looks fine but it still hurts, how can that be?
A latch can look fine while your baby isn't lifting the tongue far enough, for instance because of a hidden (posterior) tongue-tie. Then the pain carries on and your nipple comes back misshapen. If the pain stays despite a mouthful that looks right, a second opinion is justified. Have a lactation consultant or your GP look at the tongue and at how your baby feeds.
Should latching hurt in the first days?
Some tenderness as your baby latches on can happen in the first days and should ease off within about a week and a half. Pain that lasts the whole feed, cracks, bleeding or a nipple that keeps coming back flat don't belong to that. That's a signal to steer the mouthful and, if that doesn't help, to ring a lactation consultant or your GP.
Read on in this guide
- Pain-free feeding: what do you check first for nipple pain?
- The first days as your milk comes in
- Signs your baby is getting enough milk
- Spot a breast infection and know when to call
- Everything about latching and feeding (the overview)
