The last mother I saw who had been given tincture of benzoin for her sore
nipples was in the hospital. Her nightgown stuck to the tincture and when
she tried to take it off, she ripped off some nipple skin, too!  Talk about
SORE!!!

(That was when I came into the picture--to help her heal.  Nothing was said
about continuing breastfeeding.)

My initial thought was to ask the person who prescribed it to use it on his
pudendal tissue and then see how HE liked it, but I bit my tongue and
passed on the opportunity.... :-]

Anyay, I asked the mother to soak her breasts in warm water and eventually,
the leftover tincture sort of floated off her skin (what was left of it).
She refused to breastfeed the baby for two days.

She went home PLANNING to breastfeed, but never called me back and this was
before I had an official LC practice in the hospitals, so I cannot tell you
the outcome.

But, the stuff smelled bad, looked worse, and was the greatest for gluing
fabric to skin that I have ever seen!  Could that last attribute be from
too much being used? No one in my area uses it now, nor have I seen it used
for several years in the US...

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"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly
disguised as impossible situations."
Kathleen G. Auerbach,PhD, IBCLC (Ferndale, WA USA) [log in to unmask]
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