Dear all:

Now I'm going to have to dig through all those handouts from conferences.  Yes, someone 
presented evidence on using mild diluted soap to cleanse wounds many years ago at a 
conference in Manhattan.  I remember that the speaker had actually gone back to the 
ORIGINAL studies that supposedly said never use soap and those studies referred ONLY 
TO INTACT SKIN.  I was fortunate to be sitting near our local breastfeeding medicine 
specialist who dealt with my incredulity as effectively as she had when I first heard of the 
radical notion that you should completely drain the breasts of a woman with oversupply, 
then do block feeding for the rest of the day.  She convinced me.  I think that was five 
years ago. 

Anytime you have a wound, you cleanse it gently to prevent infection.  Why should 
nipples be different?  Perhaps it is the nasty hospital infections that we have in the US 
now that have made some of us pay more attention to this issue. I have seen too many 
cases when moms have told me that the nurses and doctors did NOT wash their hands 
before touching their cracked nipples or C-section incisions.  They feel too embarrassed 
to ask these health care practitioners to actually wash.  And all the studies I have read 
show that vigorous hand washing does as good or better than any other product you can 
rub on your hands. Even those products require the rubbing part, which I don't see many 
people doing.  Quite frankly, my biggest fear should I ever have the misfortune to end up 
in a hospital would be getting an infection.

After you've seen a few cases of nipples fulminating with a bad staph infection with the 
skin literally rotting off, you might actually start considering that proper hand washing 
might have prevented that infection and a gentle wash with a mild soap when it was 
getting started might have stopped it from getting worse!

Best, Susan Burger

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

Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html
To reach list owners: [log in to unmask]
Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask]
COMMANDS:
1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail
2. To start it again: set lactnet mail
3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome