I have an 8 week old boy who I have been exclusively bf up until a few weeks ago when I discovered I had a large breast abscess that came as a result of misdiagnosed mastitis. It became extremely painful to feed from the infected breast as my baby is a fussy one who likes to smack & bob his head around a lot & I stopped feeding from the sore breast as much & instead trying to express as much as I could inbetween feeding from the other. To cut a long story short I have just undergone surgery to cut & drain the 7cm abscess which I now have to have packed daily (which is more painful than childbirth) & although I have been told I can continue to bf, one my milk supply has slowed right down because I was unable to feed during my two night stay in hospital and two, I am petrified to carry on in case the same thing happens again as I never want to have to go through this again (it has been one of the worst times in my life.) We had to introduce formula in the weeks in which I was struggling to feed him while in pain, combining that with feeding him on my healthy boob as well as expressed milk from both boobs and my partner had to formula feed him while I was in hospital as unfortunately we didn’t have enough expressed milk stored at home. I feel like I want to stop with the bf out of pure fear that this could happen again (once you get an abscess they are 50% likely to reoccur), but I feel so much guilt because I know that bf is so much better off for baby. People keep telling me that so long as he’s fed I shouldn’t feel guilty & as much as I know this is so true, I still cannot help but tear up everytime I think about quitting. I think the mastitis started because of a poor latch from baby & it’s something I struggled with no matter how many times a bf specialist was visiting me to help me with it. It was something I felt neither of us could master. As I said, I want to continue bf but I feel so petrified that this could happen again that I’m almost afraid to even try again.
I forgot to mention that I have milk leaking out of the open wound which goes all over me from the infected breast, yet my good boob seems to have dried up. I think this is because when I was having issues with the abscess I felt like it hurt more when it was full so I kept starting baby on the sore breast to try & empty it & not using the good breast enough. Can I just stop feeding and they will dry up? Or am I at risk of ending up with the same thing happening again from my infected breast becoming engorged if it’s not being emptied? I hope I’ve made some kind of sense in my post. It’s been a long couple of weeks & im feeling all kinds of emotions.
I also want to say ladies that this happened because I was told I had a blocked duct & that it would go away when in actual fact it was an abscess that went from 2cm to 7cm needing surgery so please listen to your bodies & don’t chance anything. If you feel something abnormal, don’t guess & if you feel like you’ve been fobbed off by your doc, keep going back!