Let's Breastfeed

Well, you already know that there is a lot of conflicting advice with regards to almost anything, so it is hardly surprising that with an emotive topic such as breastfeeding, feelings and opinions run much higher!

With regards to mastitis and expressing, there are a couple of things I think need to be said, as their omition is causing far more damage than necessary.

So what happens when a mum develops mastitis?

Mastitis is a breast inflamation and a result of a slow build up of milk in the breast, that for some reason is not being drained. When milk is not drained from the breast, it seeps into breast tissue around the milk producing sacs and this leads to swelling and tenderness in the breast.

If the back log of milk is not dealt with effectively, the breast becomes more inflamed and then escalates into full blown mastitis where mums experience flu like symptoms including body aches and shivers accompanied by high fever. As the breast has not been drained, your body produces a lot less milk and goes through a recovery phase, where milk supply is very low.

The good news is that this can easily be avoided. At this time of the year, many nursing mums are at risk of developing mastitis when their babies pick up a cold and develop blocked, stuffy noses. As babies are nose breathers, breastfeeding becomes uncomfortable for them and this can lead to them shortening their breastfeeds.

If your baby suddenly starts pulling off the breast a lot sooner than normal, you will feel full at the end of the feed and this could become a problem if your baby continues to shorten breastfeeds over a number of days.

It is at this point that you should consider expressing the excess milk off the breast, so that your breasts are drained at the end of a feed to their normal level. Expressing to ensure the breast is empty will stave off any bouts of mastitis and will also maintain a good milk supply, so that when your baby is back to good health, your suppply is abundant and feeds revert back to normal quickly.

Many mums find that having expressed breast milk to hand for when your baby recovers and demands more food, is also reassuring.

I believe an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so be alert and act quickly this winter!

Much love,

Geraldine

Tags: expressing, mastitis, mastitis tips

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 8:30 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.