The importance of breastfeeding was stressed to me since my first midwife appointment up until birth of my daughter. During our NCT class we had a whole session on the techniques and advised to be patient, get your Netflix set up and continue trying if your baby does not latch immediately. A list of breastfeeding cafes and centres were kindly provided if we needed any help from breastfeeding nurses and wanted to meet other mothers in our area.
One thing that was not touched on was the topic of mastitis!
I was one of those lucky people who produced high volumes of milk. While Leyla was in the hospital, in NICU for a month, I had to express my milk every 3 hours, because Leyla was not allowed to feed for the first 3 weeks, as her oesophagus needed to heal hence that was only possible by keeping it dry. After 3 weeks she could only start feeding very gradually. She started with 3ml of expressed breast milk and eventually went up by 1ml per feed time until she got to the full potential for her age and weight.
The volume of breast milk depends on supply and demand. However, in my case I was not producing milk in accordance with Leyla’s demand, I was expressing every 3 hours systematically, which I believe resulted in over production of milk compared to the amount that Leyla needed at the time. When Leyla was finally breastfeeding, I was advised to breastfeed on demand, which I now think was an advice that I should have not taken on board.
Leyla was surprisingly good during the night until she was 4.5 months. She used to go to sleep from 12 midnight to 6 am! Amazing right? She also slept for long hours during the day. Hence my ‘supply and demand’ had changed from expressing every 3 hours to when it suited Leyla. This meant not emptying out my breast and this resulted in mastitis!
I had spent 18 hours in labour and had to handle healing from an emergency c-section. I think it is fair for me to say that the pain that mastitis caused was worse compared to both these experiences!
The way to treat mastitis is antibiotics. It is great if the antibiotics work in the treatment process, however if it does not, it ends up being a nightmare.
The first set of antibiotics that I was prescribed with had caused severe allergic reaction on my skin. The second set of antibiotics that I was prescribed with did not work. I did everything that was advised on google; massaging, hand expressing, hot and cold press, using cabbage and loads more but it just did not work.
I ended up having a serious infection, so I was transferred to the breast clinic in my local hospital where the abscess had to be drained out by a needle twice! There are no words to describe the pain. The infection was so aggressive that before the draining course was complete, it started leaking out on its own and then there was the joy of treating the wound that took ages to heal.
First thing that I would advise someone who, for some reason had to express milk systematically and then switch to breastfeeding on demand, to start off with emptying your breast by expressing following a feed gradually switch to breastfeeding on demand.
My further advise is that if you suspect that you may have mastitis, do all the natural remedies, such as resting, massaging and feeding your baby on the breast that you have mastitis, but while doing all those, do not delay seeing your doctor for treatment.
The Mum World 