Interesting fact--if you do an archive search for "rash," you get 393 hits.
:-)  I scrolled through them all, read the ones that seemed at all pertinent,
but didn't get much help for this mother.  Perhaps one of you can help.

Mom was referred to me by her doctor, is 2 months postpartum, breastfeeding
of course, started with a rash the day after her milk came in.  Had
absolutely no rash during pregnancy.  It started out mostly on her breasts
and where her undergarments were tighter, like the waistband and leg openings
on her panties.  She thought at first it was the laundry soap she was using
for the baby (it wasn't) and has stopped using every kind of product she
thought might be irritating her skin.  More recently the rash is on her arms
and legs.  She tried Benadryl (diphenhydramine) and gets some relief, but it
makes her sleepy and the baby wide awake!  She's been on prednisone for 8
days now and said the rash is twice as bad since she went on the prednisone,
today it's underneath her breasts and growing.  She tried one dose of Zyrtec
(cetirizine; a powerful antihistamine) today with no change.

This rash is constant, not exacerbated by breastfeeding or milk ejection as
some of the posts related.  She says it looks like small hives, and is itchy.
 Questions I came up to ask her from the archival posts were all answered in
the negative--she is taking absolutely no meds except those she's tried for
the rash, no vitamins, no hormones, she has some dairy intake but not a lot.

The only possibility I wondered about was yeast.  Mom has had periodic yeast
infections.  I KNOW this doesn't sound at all like typical yeast, but almost
all the posts on postpartum rashes indicated that prednisone was helpful, and
in this case it seems to have made the rash worse.  Plus the "underneath the
breasts" sounded more typical for yeast (but the arms and legs doesn't).  I
figured taking acidophilus and garlic certainly couldn't hurt so she will
start these tomorrow, and will talk to her doctor tomorrow about my wild
guess.  She has a referral to a dermatologist, but can't get in for a couple
of weeks, of course.  Any thoughts out there, oh wise ones?

Becky Krumwiede, RN, IBCLC
Appleton, Wisconsin

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