Thrush when breastfeeding.

[ToddlingAlong1]

I have a 3 week old that I am mixed feeding. I ended up with mastitis on one breast, so have been given antibiotics. GP, said fine to keep breast feeding as normal as thrush risk is low and treatable with drops if gets it. I decided to pump and dump, but after 3 days was struggling for time between bottle feeding and expressing, so today I latched him on. After feeding and part way through on one side I had shooting pains in my breast. Reading up on google it suggests this is due to thrush. I am now kicking myself that by feeding once, I will now give my lo oral thrush.

Do I need to go to the GP for treatment for myself and potentially him? Do you keep feeding through the treatment? I am wondering if I should wean him off and on to bottles. I feel sad having got this far, but don't want to cause him pain and problems feeding nor me.

Any advise welcome.

Thanks.

I had thrush just 3 weeks ago and fed through it. Treatment is relatively simple but check breastfeeding network for recommended prescription.

Thanks weekipper. Did you give thrush to your lo, or just yourself had it? Was it painful to continue and did your baby get reluctant to feed?

There's no medical reason why you shouldn't feed as normal throughout mastitis and thrush - assuming the GP knew you were bf and the antibiotics they gave are safe in bf. I wonder if the pain is actually thrush or not - it's often easy to blame thrush for problems when it's not necessarily the case (not implying that you are but just saying). The less you breastfeed the more reluctant baby will be to latch on I think, so personally I would breastfeed if that's what you want to do in the long term and seek proper medical advice about the pain and whether it's thrush or not. If baby gets thrush it's quite simple to treat.

I say this as me and baby were treated 3 times for thrush that wasn't actually thrush! The pain was caused by poor latch and tongue tie, and baby had white tongue due to not being able to clear the milk properly (again due to tt!)

Sounds like a difficult situation though do you have any local breastfeeding support you can access?

Might not be thrush at all. I thought I had it a few times, but like PP it was residual pain from mastitis and bad latch (root cause was tongue tie). In fact, thrush was pretty much the only bf issue we didn't have!

Best 'cure' for mastitis is to get baby feeding properly from breast. Great info on the kellymom website about dealing with mastitis, etc.