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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