MASTITIS, forth time, feeling so miserable (bit rambling, sorry)

[Epigirl]

Am sitting here feeling mastitis coming on for the forth time (this will be 3 times since just before Christmas) and am so, so down about it. Fed dd for a year with no mastitis, got it when ds was 4 weeks old, then at 16 weeks, 17 weeks and now 19 weeks. After the second time I was referred by my gp to the breast surgeon at the hospital; I went and it was truly awful as I was sat in a waiting room of people who were waiting to see if they had cancer, had to take ds in case he needed a feed (had come down with mastitis again the day before and didn't want to risk getting 'full' and the surgeon, although a lovely man, just said I was unlucky and there wasn't much he could do. I took anti-biotics all three times but hate taking them as they seem to mess with my digestion.

I am using maternity bras, even though I detest the things as they don't give enough support, am being so careful when I feed as I don't want to block anything; why does this keep happening?

I'm miserable because I can't take feeling so poorly again. Last time, I was literally on the floor trying to give dd her breakfast whilst feeding ds. My mum is great but I hate relying on her; dh works really hard and is revising for an exam at the moment.

Anyone have any ideas why this is happening? Or what I can do to try and aviod it? Outside of childbirth, I've never had pain like it in my life.

Forgot to add, all my friends stopped bf at around the 2-3 month mark and just think I should give up whereas I'm desperate not to, I really want to keep going but need to stop this pain.

Don't know why there's a wink in my first message, shouldn't be there...

Anyone?

I don't have any advice I'm afraid, but just to offer my sympathies - I had mastitis twice while breastfeeding ds and it was absolutely horrific.

I think what was happening was I got a cracked nipple and that in turn got infected somehow causing the blockage rather than the traditional bad positioning/ill-fitting bra scenarios. I could be wrong though.

Hope you feel much better soon.

This may not be relevant but possibly you should think about this. I have had thrush now for 5 months (am just about clear ). One of the long term downsides is that the tubes in my breasts got very aggrevated from all the thrush and would block and therefore engorge extremely easily. Over christmas I blocked/engorged approximately every 2 to 3 days. Both my bf councellor and the Breast feeding network agreed that blocked breasts can turn into Mastistis very quickly hence why I'm writing this. Each time I was encouraged to shift the blockage as fast as possible. Since I knew i had thrush I was desperate not to go onto antibiotics as this would only aggrevate the thrush further. I used to sit in a hot bath massaging my breasts desperately trying to unblock them. It made me sob to even touch them, even wearing a seat belt was painful so my heart goes out to you. So... Have you considered the possibility that it might be thrush? My gp left it undiagnosed for ages and it was only my trouble with breast feeding and my searching out of an NCT breast feeding councellor that got it diagnosed. For me the thrush was extremely painful (ontop of the continuous blocking) but for others it might be so. Just a thought

Wills,

That is really interesting and not something I had considered, i will definitely look into it. I am using a hot water bottle to try and shift it at present, did you do anything other than heat and massage?

Thanks x

Unfortunately no, I found that a combination of red wine (helps you to relax and I'm told it by many sources that it helps the let down), neurofen (reduces the swelling in the tubes) and a very hot bath and painful squeezing followed by leaving dd2 on the breast for a while worked. good luck