Maternity 33

week 4: what to do if you have mastitis

I breastfed my first child for 8 months and never even heard of mastitis until it struck me furiously on the 6th week of my daughter’s life. Mastitis is an inflammation of the tissue around milk ducts in the breast. It usually starts with a plugged milk duct, and can develop into a bacterial infection if the duct is not cleared. Symptoms include fever, muscular soreness, tender and red breasts. If you get it, your first reaction will be to want to know how or why you got mastitis. Don’t bother, I’ve found no good reason. And i’ve now had it twice in 3 months. You need to know what it looks like when it creeps up on you and you need to know what to do about it immediately, so that you don’t end up with unusual pain, or abcesses.

Somehow, in spite of reading at least 10 books on pregnancy, labor, delivery, new parenthood and meeting monthly with ob-gyn and midwife I had never heard of mastitis and I had no idea it could happen to anyone, including me. So when the first symptoms showed up (soreness in my back and neck, headaches), I thought I was having an extreme reaction to an easy yoga class I had attended the previous day. I remember thinking: “pregnancy really had its toll on me, I guess these muscles haven’t been stretched in months”. It was odd, given that I had been to the same class a few weeks earlier and had felt no side effects. The soreness and headaches got worse, until I had the brilliant idea to pull out a thermometer and find that I had a very high fever (104 degrees Fahrenheit). So I thought I had the flu. My visions of H1N1 mayhem were so vivid, that when my husband and I found out it was “just” mastitis, he sighed in relief. I was a little peeved at his unfortunate choice of words, but I knew what he meant. There is something a lot worse than being ill: it’s when you and your spouse and your children are ill.

When your fever reaches 104, you don’t have much choice in terms of remedy: take the antibiotics. If you catch the symptoms early and the fever stays below 102 then fight it. I’ve met a woman who had it four times in 6 months and each time applied a serious regimen of the following.

HEAT: draw a very hot bath and sit in it for at least 10 minutes, till you feel a little sweaty in the face. Apply a towel infused in comfrey leaf tea to the infected breast as it soaks in the hot water. Express milk from the sore breast, applying gentle pressure along the tender spots. Do this three times per day, spending at least 20 minutes in the tub.

COMFREY: lather on comfrey paumade on your breast, apply a moist towel and a hot water bottle (the moist towel is between the boob and the hot water bottle), and let the comfrey penetrate. Rinse your boob very well before breasfeeding. DO NOT APPLY COMFREY ON THE NIPPLE.

HOMEOPATHY: take Belladonna as often as prescribed: this depends on the dosage, but if you have a store bought remedy, it could be as much as once per hour. If you have consulted with a homeopath before mastitis and you know your constitutional remedy, take it as prescribed.

DRINK MORE THAN YOU THINK IS POSSIBLE: drink water and herbal tea all day and all night. Your urine has to be clear, if it is not, you are not drinking enough.

NURSE, NURSE, NURSE: your baby will not mind, mine actually seemed to think she had won the lottery. By all the time, I mean once every two hours (from time of first feed, to time of next feed). Don’t nurse more often, your baby still needs time to digest and snooze between meals.

REST: this is the hardest of the recommendations, because its basically impossible to take to your bed if you have a family. Children and very time consuming and your family likely makes plans weeks ahead of time, to coordinate everyone’s schedule, so you have to unravel a whole set of commitments to stay in bed. You will also need to call favors from people you may not usually call to your bedside. Get over it: you’ll repay them in kind when they need it.

A little note about antibiotics: until the last month of my pregnancy, I had not taken antibiotics in a decade, possibly longer. There are plenty of reasons to avoid taking antibiotics to fight common bacteria, but there are also plenty of reasons to take them when you get hit hard. If you have to take them, just make sure to take pro-biotics to replenish the good bacteria in your gut (that are getting killed off by the medication). Eat a lot of yoghurt (plain, cultured) and buy the live bacteria pills or drinks in the refrigerated aisle of your local health food store. You should do this for at least one month after treatment. I’m also giving my daughter baby pro-biotics in a few ounces of milk once a day, just in case the tiny amounts of antibiotics that make it into her system have attacked the good bacteria in her gut.

Ok — this might have been little too graphic for a blog entry. Read on for something more poetic.