My mother with stringy milk and blockages is still having a difficult time!  This is the mom I posted about a few weeks ago whose milk comes out in greenish strings that ball up the size of a pea.  Hope someone can steer us in the right direction.

The mom still experiences frequent (every few days) blockages with salty milk and strings that are difficult to clear from the breast. It takes a few feeding to 12 hours to clear each episode.   This mom is taking lecithin and doing soaks and massage to get the strings out, adding some more salt to her diet, watching saturated fat intake, drinking plenty of water, and nursing on both breasts. 

The mom was nursing one breast per feed because she had an oversupply in the beginning.  She didn't think she still had this problem but when she encourage baby #2 to nurse both breasts per feed, the baby had classic colic symptoms and always green stools.  So, it seems that she may still have a large milk supply.

One interesting item is that the mom reports: "Two days ago I had stringy milk in the right breast.  I was able to capture about an ounce in a bottle when I hand-expressed the strings out last evening.  When I checked it this morning, the milk was totally chunky and sour.  So it went bad in the fridge in less than 12 hours."  With the stringy problem, I wasn't sure if this was the typical enzyme problem that we look at with other moms whose milk "goes bad" upon sitting.  She has also reported that the milk tasted sour directly from the breast.  

The mom experienced a sore area on her breast that she couldn't resolve which was developing into mastitis so she called the doctor who prescribed Augmentin 875 MG (it's amoxicilin and clavulanate combined) for 14 days.  The doctor said she could culture my milk if the antibiotics don't help.  

My questions are: how valuable is a milk culture and how would you take one for this situation?  Should the mom have one of the strings tested to see if there is a staph aureus or other infection that isn't going away?  Does anyone have any experience with an infection causing thickened milk and it clearing with medication treatment?   The mom was reluctant up to now to take antibiotics because she had a history of thrush /yeast which cleared upon treatment.     

The mom did have some blood tests.  The results were bad cholesterol is 104 and good cholesterol is 76. One Lactnetter asked me about her cholesterol.  Also, her liver function is fine.  The mom wondered about her if her liver was damaged and giving her an enzyme problem hence the "sour milk" but that is not the case.   Everything tested great, and her prolactin level is high, as expected.  She didn't have her gall bladder tested as suggested by one other Lactnetter- the only mom who she knew had a stringy milk problem happened to have a gall bladder problem but she didn't know if it was related.

Any more guesses on why this mom has such a problem? 

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html