Is nipple pain and damage caused by your nipple height or your breast anatomy?

It's true that some anatomic variations of breast size and nipple height, though poorly defined, have been shown to have links with breastfeeding problems including nipple pain. These handful of preliminary studies show links between lower nipple height and larger breast size with breastfeeding problems.

You can find out about these four studies here.

To my mind, though, these studies simply demonstrate how important it is for women to have strategies which eliminate breast tissue drag and help baby draw up as much breast tissue as possible into her mouth, regardless of our human anatomic variability.

It seems to me that the current tendency to pathologise anatomic diversity and blame either the mother's or baby’s anatomy for breastfeeding problems has come about because our health systems lack effective clinical approaches which stabilise baby at the breast across the whole range of glorious anatomic diversities which are normal for humans!