waaaah - thrush and bleeding nipple after a year of bf - do I give up

[vonsudenfed]

I've had thrush a couple of times before, but this is the worst. And now my right nipple is bleeding at every feed and dd looks like a vampire when she's fed from it. And I'm tired and fed up, but that's mostly the fault of the cats. Hairy little sods.

But I've been on fluconazole for a week, and it's not getting much better and the bleeding is getting worse, and frankly I am quite close to giving up, even though I'm only doing 2 feeds a day. The only reason I haven't so far is that dd has some food intolerances and eczema, so I don't want to catapault her onto a cows milk diet.

Any advice, help, other things I can try? (a kitchen door would be quite good too, then I could shut the bloody cats in at night, but never mind).

[monkeybird]

Oooouch, poor you - is the bleeding from the thrush or do you have additional damage as well? It sounds severe for thrush to bleed. I believe other people recommend grapefruit seed extract and gentian violet for thrush but I have no idea what you do with them or where you get them or what they actually do! not much help there then!

I read somewhere that thrush is getting resistant to fluc so it might be worth trying one of the other things. Is your baby being treated at the same time?

I have used Jelonet to heal a bleeding nipple but I think the moist wound healing process won't help if you still have thrush so probably need to get on top of that first? Or perhaps speak to a BFC to decide which to treat first (bleeding vs thrush)

Good luck and defo don't give up if you can possibly get through it - you've come so far and for such good reasons... But if you have to, you have to.