8 weeks of Nipple Thrush - Desperate :-(

[MrsWhoozit]

Hi

This is my first posting and I am desperate for help.

I have an 11 week old baby and I am breastfeeding. I have however had nipple thrush since she was 3 weeks following antib's for mastitus.

I (and baby) have been on fluconozole, nystatin, daktarin gel AND cream, Grapefriut seed extract tablets and acidophillius for most of this time and its still there. I have cut out all dairy, sugars and yeast from my diet and boil evrything I touch and wear. Its now getting impossible.

Does anyone know what I am doing wrong? Am I missing something? The only thing I have left is the gentian violet and i understand that has some health risks?? The GPs have given up on me as rthey dot know what else to do and am being encouraged to stop breastfeeding.

Am pretty peed off with it all now but feel bf-ing is important to me so ant to continue.

Has anyone been through this and survived?

Thanks

I haven't been through this, but had the beginnings of mastitis once and that was bad enough, you have my utmost sympathy.

Well done for persevering, it must be really tough, you sound amazing!

Have you spoken to Leche League? I found them to be really good. Their helpline is 0845 120 2918.

An excellent website on BF is www.kellymom.com. Here's a collection of stuff on thrush hope there's something useful there.

Also, I'm not a Dr so this is a total wild guess and could be very wide of the mark, but is there any chance it could be something other than thrush, but with similar sypmtoms? (I don't know if such a thing even exists!) It's just if the Drs had tried to treat me (for anything) for a long time and it hadn't cleared up, I would think it would be reasonable to start wondering if they had the diagnosis right in the first place. Just a thought.

Tiktok is our resident BF specialist I think. Hopefully she'll see this and be able to offer some help.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help, but hopefully some of that might point you in the right direction for finding a solution.

Welcome to mumsnet BTW

Call the Leche League. I am sure they will be able to help.

Just wondered how you're getting on, is it any better?

baby is being treated with nystatin? DH is being treated with nystatin?

have you had any oral nystatin?

your not on any antibiotics are you?

sorry i had thrush in UK when breastfeeding and then came to Australia and found far better treatment, with lots of nystatin and some canesten. this seemed to work a lot better.

I had this when DD2 was ten weeks old. I was devastated as I found breast feeding really hard with DD1 and gave up after 6 weeks. DD2 was a fab breastfeeder, but thrush in her mouth obviously made it very difficult for her to feed. She had nystatin for her mouth, but I just kept reinfecting her. I read about a loading dose of clotrimazole (over the counter thrush pill) for you which is quite high and doctors won't prescribe. You should read the links above as they are really helpful. I self medicated in the end, going from chemist to chemist getting thrush pills which was hideously expensive but gave us some respite. Not easy, I sympathise.

Do you have some GSE liquid? I used it to wash my nipples after each feed and to wipe out DDs mouth after each feed too (20 drips in 25ml cool boiled water) I took 3 GSE tabs morning and night and did the nipple and mouth washing for about 4 days and it cleared up, I carried on for another 3 days and we were both clear. We had had nystatin, canestan, daktarin the works and it hadn't helped.

Mrs whoozit. how are you getting on? i am in the exact same position as you and seriously fed up. My dd (first) is 9 wks old and i was told i had thrush when she was 4 wks. I had been having after-pain for about ten days prior to that so but thought that was normal. I've had 2 separate doses of diflican, have now just finished 7 day course, have used one bottle of mycostatin on my nipples, used it in dds mouth, tried daktarin gel, being leaving my nipples exposed and if anything, today its worse than ever. My nipples appear and feel so raw. My right one in particular is in bits, so much so, there is no way I can feed dd from it. I'm expressing from the right to keep the supply up but even that is painful. I really thought at this stage everything would be plain sailing. Despite a number of people encouraging me to give up bfing, I really really dont want to.

I actually just joined mumsnet today in the hope I could find someone in a similar situation who managed to get rid of the thrush and continue to breastfeed.
Today, I actually considered that I may have something else instead of/as well as thrush so am going to take myself back to the doctor this week but any tips/advice/suggestions from you Mummies would be much appreciated.