Diane, In Harare I used to recommend gently washing sore nipples with
soap if they looked kinda yucky and yellow-ish and slightly
infected. I suggested: after breastfeeding, wash your hands, dip a
clean cotton-wool swab in tepid boiled water, so that it's really
soft and sloppy, brush it along your normal hand-soap (hopefully
ordinary soap, not highly perfumed, not anti-bacterial, something
like Lux toilet soap), *gently* dab/brush/wash across and around the
nipple, then take a fresh swab, dip it in the boiled water and use to
rinse the soap off very well. Allow to air-dry. If worried about
drying out the nipples, follow the washing with a little quantity of
freshly expressed milk, allow to air-dry again, cover with a clean
breast pad or gauze swab and replace the bra. Like you, I'm a big
fan of plan old soap-and-water to keep hands, and wounds clean and
infection-free. While alcohol on damaged skin does hurt, using soap
in this way does not.
Pamela Morrison IBCLC
now in Rustington, England and - frankly - appalled by the scourge of
MRSA and use of alcohol hand-washing in our hospitals, instead of
soap and water! Noting also that displays of soap in shops and
pharmacies are very small, whereas displays of bottled detergent
hand-washes, bath washes and shower-gels are large, and wondering if
soap is going out of fashion even as sore nipples seem to be on the increase??
---------------------------
"Soap on wounded skin? OWWW!"
Interesting! I thought mild soap on broken-skin nipples was becoming =
fairly mainstream, but maybe it's just a US thing. The thinking, as I =
understand it, is "Hey, this is skin, and anywhere else on the body if =
there were broken skin we'd be keeping it clean." Are other countries =
not doing this?
Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC Ithaca, NY USA
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