I am posting with the permission of a mother who is seeing a replay
of a situation that ended her bf two years ago with her first baby.

Then, she developed classic mastitis signs at 3 weeks, and (unusually
for the UK - in fact I have only heard of it happening once or twice
before) her doc took a milk sample and had it checked at the lab
where they found staph aureus. She was told she 'had' to stop bf, and
she took antibiotics which improved her symptoms.

Now baby no. 2 is 4 weeks, and she has pain symptoms though nothing
to see...no lumps, red patches. This time they are 'allowing' her to
continue feeding while she is treated with a/biotics and a sample has
gone to the lab for checking again.

My understanding has always been that a clean sample of breastmilk is
hard to get - what about the contact of the milk with the nipple,
which may have all sorts of flora on it?  But anyway....

Her symptoms are on both breasts, and she feels pain 'radiating'
between feeds, often if she is going over a speed bump in the car,
she says. It is also painful to feed, though the sore cracked nipples
she had in the first days are now ok. Baby is fine, thriving, no
issues with him.

The doc has said they could offer her u/sound to check for abscess.

My thoughts are this is probably abscess/es (though it's unusual in
both breasts) and I just don't know about the staph aureus in the
milk.

Thoughts? As a bfc I don't/can't become involved in the medical
treatment of breastfeeding problems, and my role is to support and
inform throughout, so hope I can get some information here :)

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc, UK

             ***********************************************

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