I was contacted by NICU nurse because she wondered if the mother of a baby in her care had mastitis. I was on postpartum so just asked the mother to come over to our ward and we could see her as an outpatient. Baby was about 10 days old now, not latching, and for the previous 24 hours had not been allowed to have physical contact with mother because he had conjunctivitis which was being treated as bacterial, and she had purulently sore nipples. She had sustained skin damage due to bad fit of pump flanges (and we don't have any alternative sizes to use in the hospital). On arrival she had all the classic signs and symptoms of mastitis, plus blood work that suggested bacterial infection. Culture was taken from the pus on one nipple. She had been running a fever for two days, and having pain in one breast during that time. Pumping much more than baby can possibly consume, and was told to rest and get a full night's sleep without pumping all night, the evening before I saw her, since she was so sore from pumping. Woke up in the morning with what could have turned into an abscess if we had not gotten on top of it by then. Why would anyone tell a mother who has all the major risk factors for mastitis PLUS signs and symptoms of a fulminating case of same, to NOT REMOVE ANY MILK for a period of nearly 10 hours? The only thing they did right was to call in the experts, but they could have done that at least 3 days sooner, and more like a week. Arrgghh. This goes right along with the kind of charting where it says 'baby feeding well' right next to where it says 'mother bleeding from cracked nipples, given nipple salve', which also still occurs on my own ward, even though we did make the grade for getting certified as baby-friendly. When we go to electronic charting I think I will see to it that there is an automatic function in the charting program that makes such a note impossible. Rachel Myr Kristiansand, Norway *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html