Wedged or squashed nipples may be a sign of nipple and breast tissue drag but if there are no breastfeeding problems you don't need to worry

It's likely that the nipples of the mother in the photo above will be wedged when the baby comes off. The baby is positionally unstable, with a worried look and visible lips.

Women often notice that their nipple is wedged or squashed after the baby has finished feeding. This is sometimes described as nipple compression, or the nipple taking on a lipstick shape.

This wedging may occur even if your baby has a deep face-breast bury and there is no pain, and your baby isn't fussing with feeds. In this case, there's no need to worry. Your baby is breastfeeding with some breast tissue drag (which can happen even with a deep face-breast bury) but there are no breastfeeding problems from this, and so the wedging doesn't matter.

You can find out why many women breastfeed successfully despite a lot of nipple and breast tissue drag here.

Wedged or squashed nipples are a sign of nipple and breast tissue drag which needs to be addressed if you and your baby have any breastfeeding problems

However, you might be one of those women who has nipple pain or damage, or whose baby fusses a lot at the breast - and who also has wedging of her nipple visible immediately after feeds. In this case, it's very important to work with the gestalt method for eliminating nipple and breast tissue drag. You'd keep trying to do this until the three pillars of positional stability are in place: no pain, no unsettled baby behaviour at the breast, and visible symmetrical face-breast bury. You can find out about these starting here.

• Nipple wedging is not ‘compression’ by the tongue but results from the way stretching pressures in the mouth affect the nipple. You can find out why it's not caused by the tongue here.

• You can find how babies suck at the breast here.

• You can find out how to use the gestalt method, starting here.