breast abscess drained - what to expect now?

[ThatWayMadnessLies]

I hope someone can give me some reassurance. My baby is 8 weeks old and we have been ebf from the beginning. We have dealt with thrush, tongue tie that was "mild" and was finally released at 4 weeks, and mastitis at 4 wks that seemed to clear up with antibiotics. His latch is much better now and weight gain is good but I have had a lump since the mastitis cleared up and yesterday at breast clinic had it diagnosed as an abscess that had "walled itself off" and had lots of pus drained by syringe. It had been missed because I seemed to respond and recover after antibs.

I've got another week of flucloxacillin but today my breast feels red and hot and quite hard where it was drained. The surgeon had to push quite hard and irrigate with lots of local anesthetic so hopefully it will feel better in a few days? My plan is to wait 48 hours for the antibiotics to kick in and call clinic if no improvement. I am just so nervous and don't want to stop breastfeeding just as things were getting sorted.... Any advice greatly appreciated.

Having had an abscess myself I didn't want to read and run. I had an incision and drainage rather than drainage by syringe, so don't know what the correct advice is. It seems sensible to me to keep an eye on it and call in 48 hours if no significant improvement and maybe call sooner if it starts getting worse or you are feeling worried. I hope you get it sorted out soon. Hopefully somebody with better knowledge than me will be able to give some better informed advice soon.

thanks foxtrot. Did you heal well from your procedure? Things are really sore tonight but no fever so I will wait until morning to call.

Haven't had a breast abscess but I think if the area feels hot and is red it could be infected (again). I would get it checked sooner rather than later to be sure.

Do get it checked if it's still hot and red today. My experience of abscesses (albeit not breast abscesses) is that the hot/red/hardness ends with the draining. It will be sore, but shouldn't show signs of infection.
Hope that all is fine this morning, however, and that the anti-bs got going overnight.

ThatWay yes it healed well but having an open incision that had to be packed everyday was the end of BFing DC1. However, I am now BFing DC2 with no major problems so far (just been 10 days though).

Let us know how you get on.

foxtrot I hope that you don't encounter any problems this time around. I never imagined that breastfeeding would bring so many challenges and I feel incredibly unlucky to have this now just when I thought we had turned a corner.

lucky I am going to insist that the breast clinic see me again tomorrow. I tried to ring but there has been no answer and I would rather see the breast surgeons than end up in A and E. I have had a fallopian abscess before as well and the general surgeons didn't do a great job of sorting that out. It took a second surgery to deal with the infection and remove the tube.

Hopefully the small number of responses means that not many people are struggling with this!

That's good - you mustn't suffer any more than you have to (which is more than enough, frankly). It's awful to have to deal with this when managing a tiny baby too. Hope you get some rest tonight and good luck tomorrow.