I’ve just read the several posts of this topic, rather belatedly as this has
been a very busy week. My comment isn’t a study, only a personal
observation. Two of the worst examples of nipple damage I’ve seen used only
breastmilk for healing.  In neither case did I have the foresight to take
before and after photos – in one case because I didn’t have a camera handy,
in the other case because there was little point taking an “after” picture
when there wasn’t a “before” picture for comparison. 

In the latter example, the mother had a small chunk out of her nipple, at
the side of the tip. She chose to continue to directly breastfeeding and I
made sure she could latch comfortably by herself. She dabbed her milk on the
wound very frequently during her day stay, probably every 20-30 minutes,
letting it air dry. As the hours went by, the hole started to fill up with
new, puffy, pink flesh. Just before she left after 6 ½ hours, the new flesh
was getting very close to the original level of the skin. That’s just one
case, and I’ll never know if she tended to heal better than most people.
Good attention to hand hygiene was in place.

The other case was in an emergency situation in a remote area in searing
heat, where the baby needed to be kept at the breast, almost continually, to
prevent dehydration. The deep nipple wound, near the base of the nipple
shaft, healed very quickly indeed. This mother had always been a slow
healer.

Okay, just anecdotal information, but I was impressed.

Virginia

 

Dr Virginia Thorley, OAM, PhD, IBCLC, FILCA 

Brisbane, Qld, Australia 

E: [log in to unmask] 

 

Julie T wrote:

Someone asked about whether breast milk is beneficial or detrimental to the
nipples, and I just came across this in my text: 

From Counseling the Nursing Mother, 5th ed., page 390: "Many practitioners
recommend that the mother apply her expressed milk to the sore area and
allow for air-drying of the areola.  Breastmilk was found to heal nipples
faster than using lanolin (Mohammadzadeh et al., 2005)."  

 


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