Former EastEnders star Melissa Suffield has opened up about her breastfeeding struggles in a live chat with Natural Birthing Company founder Jane Mason this week.
She revealed her breastfeeding journey in the candid chat, where she told how she had an "absolute meltdown" after suffering from mastitis.
Melissa welcomed her son, River, into the world in March, and she began breastfeeding as soon as he was born.
In the live chat, Melissa said her nipples were left so sore that she cried for three hours on the sofa after feeding her son.
She revealed she had a "clogged duct" that made breastfeeding incredibly painful, and that the skin came away from her nipples after feeding.
Melissa described the level of pain she was in before being diagnosed with mastitis, "It was really high and not in a place where I could knead it out.
"That turned into mastitis which was my first and really only mum absolute meltdown.
"I was on the sofa in tears for about three hours saying, 'This is the worst pain ever.'
"I didn’t want to take the antibiotics I’d been prescribed because I was worried about forcing River to have it."
To help ease the pain, the TV star turned blogger used breast milk as a topical treatment, but this only made her "nipple trauma" worse, causing the skin to peel off.
She explained, "I put breast pads in the bra. But when I woke up the next day and peeled them off, basically all the skin came away. So I was like, 'I’m done to pumping'.
"So I wore nipple shells instead of the pads. I wore them for about eight weeks and that was literally how long it took."
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Ex soap star Melissa introduced her baby to the world in mid-March.
Taking to Instagram, she announced the happy news with a series of snaps of her River as a newborn.
Alongside the sweet images, the caption said: 'River Jefferson Carter-Robinson 16.03.2020.
"What a perfect little human we appear to have made. We could not be more obsessed with you".
The actress played Ian Beale's daughter Lucy in the soap for six years, but was axed from EastEnders over her "unruly behaviour" in 2010.