Is there anything else i should be doing for mastitis?

[DialMforMother]

background - Have had horrid gastro bug - felt better Tuesday. woke up yesterday with nasty engorged lumpy breast and shivers and aches. Put the other symptoms down to the gastro thing but pumped, massaged, applied dd liberally to affected breast, had a hot shower and massaged again etc. Kept getting her to start with affected breast all day. This morning it's not as painful but still a bit lumpy and now red in the affected area.

Am now wondering if yesterday's aches and chills were symptoms of mastitis not gastro thing and whether I'm underestimating how bad it is. I don't want itto get worse is all. I probably would rather avoid antibiotics but is there anything else I should be doing?

Sorry also dd is 5 months and ebf.

Hot shower, wide tooth comb your boob, keep feeding. That's about all I know, but I'm sure someone else will be along soon.

Oh, and taking Ibuprofen can help reduce swelling and pain.

See this section of kellymom.com

If you're improving then you probably don't need treatment but if it stays the same or gets worse i would call your gp asap

Thanks - didn't know about the comb and will try that. Should have known to have gone to Kellymom but the other symptom is that I'm a bit stupid. :)

I applied a hot wheatie that you put in the microwave before feeding and changed feeding positions. Also was told to use a comb by hv.

If you think you may have mastitis then I'll echo marzipananimal and say do get seen by your GP asap. Don't feel shy about the antibiotics. They will sort you out very quickly and they will prescribe ones that are safe when BF. I had mastitis when DS was 3 weeks old and it was horrible - the flu-like symptoms were worse than the sore patch on my breast tbh. I felt horrendous, bedridden etc but the antibiotics helped me feel better within half a day (good job as DH had to go to work the next day - would have been useless if I'd still felt ill). Do make sure you're not wearing anything too tight - I think mine was caused by a sleeping bra that was on the tight side. HTH

I always massaged the lump whilst actually bfing. Having said that; I did always manage to catch it early.

Thanks ladies - it does seem to be improving but I think that's what it was. I felt ROTTEN yesterday! Have just adjusted nursing bra and that seems too much of a coincidence so will go back to loose. Thanks for all the help :)

DH always insisted on GP because his experience with farm animals told him mastitis could be v serious indeed. And I was v ill with it. The only time it's ever been useful to have the farm animal analogy TBH.