Dear Joan,
I too have recently had a patient with severe night sweats whilst she was
breastfeeding. She developed these sweats several weeks after she started
breastfeeding her first baby. These were drenching sweats waking her and
sometimes her husband up.
Initial blood screens revealed an elevated alkaline phosphatase and ESR
suggestive of some underlying pathology. Over the next twelve months she
was reviewed by two consultant physicians and had every investigation known
to mankind including a bone scan and two abdominal CT scans. She had a swag
of blood tests, some so obscure that I have only ever read about them.
And guess what -  no cause found!! The diagnosis was idiopathic
hyperhidrosis - that's consultant physicians language for "boy this patient
is sweating a lot and I haven't got a clue why".
In the end the patient became convinced that it was because she was
breastfeeding. I wasn't convinced. However the sweats stopped as soon as
the baby was weaned at twelve months.
Laureen Lawlor-Smith
South Australia