>In your experience, how common is mastitis for moms of babies 1 1/2-2 yr.
who
>breastfeed very infrequently, 2-4 times/day?
I am sure you will get some replies from others' practice, but I think a
question such as this exposes our vast lack of information on mastitis. If
you look at the WHO review on mastitis and at Cathy Fetherston's article in
March 2001 Breastfeeding Review, you will see how astonishingly little we
know about mastitis, including its incidence. Various studies have found a
variety of incidences -- but these have been measured in different ways
(numbers of cases, numbers of women experiencing masitits, in the first
months, over a whole lactation, etc.) so that figures -- which range (from
memory) from 2% to 30+% are not comparable. Also -- correct me if I am
wrong, Cathy -- there is no comparative study of two cohorts/populations of
women who breastfeed in different styles (say, scheduled vs ad lib) and
their experiences. As Cathy points out in her article, we know much much
more about masitits in cows than in women. We don't even know -- as Cathy
points out -- if mastits is part of the normal physiology of breastfeeding
or if it is pathological.
Magda Sachs
Breastfeeding Supporter, BfN, UK
ps in the last year I breastfed my daughter she frequently went several
weeks between feeds -- she might go two or three weeks than breastfeed 4 or
5 times in a day. I never had mastitis or even engorgement. She never
complained that there was no milk (and, knowing her, she would have let me
know!). I had, in breastfeeding her brother and her over some years, only
one incidence of obstructive mastitis -- just a few days after she was born.
I suspect there is a lot of variation between individual women, and I, for
whatever reason, am not suseptible. But then, I also always fed babies very
frequently in the early days, and who knows if this is more important than
predisposition???
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