Thrush gone terribly wrong - advice /support needed....

[Leenie]

(sorry in advance for long post) My ds got oral thrush at 6 wks, was prescribed nystatin drps and me clotrimazole cream, it did not clear properly, DS has tied tongue so is quite an aggressive feeder, (chomps rather than sucks), so i have ended up with very sore cracked and split nipples, infection got into my nipples and doctor prescribed amoxycylin last week, it did not help and feeding became unbearable with toe curling pain every feed, the infection seems to have spread into breast tissue and my whole breasts burn especially after feeding, on thursday after a very painful and tearful feed i had to take him off after just 10 mins because i couldnt take the pain anymore, i went and bought some formula just to give nipples a break, doctor has prescribed stronger antibiotics for suspected mastitis, they are def helping cos the pain and burning is easing,but nipples still very cracked and sore, i did express on the friday and sat night as was very full, and started trying to give odd feed to keep milk from drying up, but nipples getting painful again and milk supply seems quite low, have just had a very sleepless night where he was feeding every hour or two,DS does not feed well with nipple shields, i presume this is due to tongue tie, has anyne else had these probs or can advise me please, i really want to keep feeding him myself and feel sad that it's not working out smoothly

that's sounds very painful Leenie. Have you been in contact with a breastfeeding counsellor?

Do you still have the thrush infection do you think?

You poor thing. I found that after approx 10 weeks of thrush hell, the only thing that cleared it (and within about 3 days of starting it) was Grapefruit seed extract. Theres tonnes of threads on here about it and its amazing power. It has highly powered antifungal antibiotic properties.
Look at this
It really works!
I bought it from here for the capsules
and
here for the liquid

I used it to swab my nipples and bought saftey buds to swab LO's mouth out. and took the capsules too.

Fab stuff!

Good luck

I had this a few weeks ago and you have my full sympathy.

I had fluconazole tablets prescribed by the Dr. You have to take a high iitial does (400 mg I think) then 200 a day but that helped. I also washed my nipples with vinegar and water after each feed and used the grapefruit seed extract.

With the mastitis I massaged and massaged where I found a tiny blockage till I gradually cleared it - thicker milk came out of the blocked duct. Look up mastitis on here for more details.

Hope you feel better soon.

Much sympathy here!
I'm in roughly the same situation, taking loads of flucanazole and giving Squirmy nystatin drops (previously I was prescribed flucloxcillin and daktarin cream).

I find expressing milk with a pump doesn't hurt at all whereas latching on a sore nipple is agony, so tonight a friend is cuddling him while I express loads of milk - I can't deal with another night of being chomped at. I should be a bit better in the morning I hope.

Yes, I've had this several times while I was bf DD. I'd get mastitis and then the cracks would lead to thrush, it's a vicious circle - the antibiotics make you more susceptible to thrush.

You definitely need fluconazole as well as the ABs, and be prepared to have to repeat the dose (either 5 days or a week) a few times over to make it go. Not all drs are across this very well, but the Breastfeeding Network have excellent info here - you may need to give this to your dr...

I then used daktarin cream after every single bf regardless of whether I felt the thrush or not.

Other things I did that may or may not have helped were to cut sugar out of my diet as much as I could (I was drinking lots of squash when I first started bf!) and take a good digestive supplement (acidowhatever bacteria) to help keep the thrush down.