Repeated mastitis. Please help!

[artichokes]

DD2 is 14 weeks and I think I am coming down with my third bout of mastitis.

Each bout starts with me feeling run down, then within hours the left side of my left breast starts to ache and the nipple is painful when DD feeds. Then comes a low-level fever. The past two times I have gone straight to Dr and zapped it with a week long course of ABs before it got wofrsw. Now I am at that stage and loathe to go on ABs again so soon. Should I or can I do other things and go to Dr if they fail? And why might this be happening? I fed DD1 for 14 months and only got mastitis once right in the last week because I was cutting feeds to quickly.

Please help. I Now have D&V too. Can that be a symptom? Or is this something else?

My temp is now 102f. The doctor can only see me at 5pm but I doubt I am well enough to get there. I feel terrible. Is there really nobody with any wise words? I am alone with a 2 year old and a 14 week old and I can hardly stand.

I had recurrent mastitis with DD; it turned out that she had tongue tie. Because she was gaining weight so well no one thought to check, so it wasn't picked up until 10wks. So that might be worth looking into - the procedure for correcting it sounds awful but in fact is completely untraumatic, DD was more bothered by her vacs.

I found that lying in a hot bath, sort of sideways so that the affected breast was in the water, and then hand expressing while in the water was the quickest way to clear the blockage and the infection - I only took ABs the first time and after that got pretty good at shifting it by myself (my GP was a disaster so I lost all faith in him).

Mastitis is so painful, I really feel for you. Can you go to bed? If necessary can your DH/DP take time off to look after your older DD so that you can rest? Mastitis can be triggered by being worn out and run down, so if you can find a way to take a break, do.

Take paracetamol which will bring your fever down. You can alternate it with ibuprofen which is an anti-inflammatory and will help with the inflammation. I took paracetamol every six hours and ibuprofen every eight hours to get myself through, it doesn't get rid of the pain but it does take the edge off.