Can you get thrush just inside your boobs?

[McPhee]

I was speaking with my HV this morning, because after feeding I've been having sharp stabbing pains inside my breasts. My nipples are clear and so is babys mouth.

I've made a dr appointment for this afternoon, but is he going to laugh at me

You definitely can but a lot of GPs are sceptical about it

Meant to add that's it's very unlikely to be thrush if there aren't any white bits on baby's mouth and no nappy rush.

Unlikely but I got it and it was painful, more of a burning than a stabbing though. The midwife didn't know what to do so I rang the NCT and got a very helpful lady who told me what to get and it cleared up very quickly.

DS had no white patches but I'd already tried everything else. I hope or your sake that it isn't thrush but do try the NCT if the GP is unhelpful.

Sorry I can't remember what the stuff was called, DS is 12 but I can still remember the pain. hth

The dr was unsure but is treating me as if it is thrush. He's given me a weeks worth of Fluconazole 50mg.

I am dreading feeding Dd at the moment purely because of the pain.

I really sympathise, even after 12 years, I can still remember it. Now you've got the treatment it should improve quite quickly. Good luck

I've had three tablets so far, and I didn't have the pain so much today. So nice to feed and enjoy it rather than dread it

I'm very glad I mentioned it to the HV now!

I've only got two pills left, and the pain is still there.

So what else could it be, because surely if it was thrush they would have worked. I don't want to give up BF but it's starting to get to me.

Hi there so sorry, it's a bugger isn't it. I had thrush and there were no visible signs on me and DD1 which is very common, it's not true that it's unlikely to be thrush unless you can see it. You need to both get treated or your baby will just pass it back to you. I found the fluoconazole took a while to work too and in the meantime it's a good idea to try and cut down or if you can, eliminate the sugar that candida thrives on from your diet. Check kellymom pages on thrush for more tips.

If the pain is still there and you have finished (or nearly finished) a course of fluconazole, it might be worth thinking of what else it could be - staph infections have been shown to be misdiagnosed as thrush (an Australian study found all of the mums diagnosed as having thrush either had staph or no infection at all here) or it may be something like poor positioning/attachment.

This and this may help you to work out what's causing the pain - also the bfing helplines may assist you in working out what's going on.

Are your nipples, well, nipple shaped following a feed or are they squashed, lipstick/bullet/wedge shaped or change colour at all? Sometimes nipples being compressed during a feed can make the tissue deep in the breast hurt even though it's the nipple that's being squashed.

How old is the baby and how has the feeding been up til now?

The dr never mentioned about cutting back sugar, and I've been stuffing the snacks because I've no time to eat/make anything else at the moment

Well I thought the feeding was going ok, but yes Dd does tend to suck my nipple rather a lot. She doesn't seem to open her mouth wide, she's actually only got a tiny mouth, so she tends to suck my nipple in then start sucking. I've tried to wait until she's got her mouth wide, but she gets really fretful and starts shaking her head from side to side. Then when she's latched on, she still does it for a while which ruddy hurts.

We've just had a bad breastfeed, it was so painful. I had to keep unlatching her and taking a deep breath. It was right back to the toe curling first few weeks . I'm sat here wondering if I can carry this on, but I don't want to feel like a failure. In the early days I had a breast feeding worker come out, who worked along side the midwife. She kept showing me how to get Dd to latch, but I really don't think we've got it right, and her suck is SO fecking hard!

I don't know what to do tbh. I should probably get back to the dr to talk about the pain again, but I think I'll see a different dr this time. The last one, I don't really have much confidence in tbh.

Baby is 5 weeks.

I wonder if baby is tongue tied. It is common for tongue tie symptoms to be mistaken for thrush.

have a read here

and here

The nipple sucking, the shaking head back and forth, the pain, the inability to open wide, the strong suck and the "thrush" are all tongue tie symptoms.

Unfortunately most GPs will not be able to sort out a bfing issue - they just don't get trained in bfing management. A bfing counsellor, IBCLC, Infant Feeding Co-ordinator (through the hospital or HV) or a bfing peer supporter would be a much better bet to be honest. Are there any local bfing groups that you can go to?

In the meantime try biological nurturing (the head shaking actually helps baby to latch on when you are in a BN position but hinders latching when you are sitting up right) and deep latch technique (though not at the same time!) as they can help get a more comfy latch.

She had her tongue checked, because she was born with a skintag underneath it, so I know it's not tied. She can poke it all the way out as well.

There's a group at our local childrens centre tomorrow morning, I guess I should go and see if they can help me.

I'm already dreading her next feed, and I really don't want to feel like that.

By skin tag do you mean like webbing or string attaching the tongue to the floor of her mouth or something else?

No it was an actual white coloured skintag. At first the paediatrics thought it was an absess. It's dropped off now thankfully, we think though the sucking motion of breastfeeding.

Plenty people have their babies tongues checked and are told that they are not tongue tied, when in fact they are.

Posterior ties are really hard to find unless the person looking is an expert. Some of them can't even be seen, they have to be felt.

Your feeding history screams tongue tie to me.

And being able to poke tongue all the way out doesn't mean it isn't tied.

DS1's tongue tie went undiagnosed until he was 6. His tongue looked completely normal, he could lift it up high, he could stick it out really far, but the back was tied down with a posterior tie so his feeding was woefully inefficient.