Website design By BotEap.comYes.
Website design By BotEap.comTeat yeast. Candida albicans. yeast infection Thrush.
Website design By BotEap.comOften misdiagnosed, often the source of much obsession and excessive and unnecessary new mother angst.
Website design By BotEap.comSo, let’s start with the fact that yeast is a normal flora. It is a fungus (hence the fungus above) that lives throughout the body in varying concentrations. In reality, we are never “yeast-free,” nor should we try to be. This is an important fact to remember.
Website design By BotEap.comMy mother warned me as a child never to sit in a wet bathing suit or I could get “crotch rot.” Pretty graphic description for a yeast infection, but you better believe I always got out of my suit on time. Since yeast loves dark, warm, and moist places, the vagina, mouth, and rectum are common places for yeast to overgrow. Remember, it always lives at low levels in these places, but yeast is an opportunistic insect. Given the advantage, a wet bathing suit, the pH disruption of the sexual yeast grows too large and exceeds its limits. The result is a burning, raw, and sometimes itchy sensation.
Website design By BotEap.comWe pretty much only hear about yeast overgrowth on the nipples while breastfeeding. It’s rare to get a nipple yeast infection at any other time. Lactating nipples are not only a warm, moist, and dark place, but also often have varying degrees of tissue breakdown. That, coupled with already low immunity from lack of sleep, leaves the perfect opening for the yeast to overgrow.
Website design By BotEap.comThere is a lot about yeast on the interwebs. I’ll give you my rundown on yeast: how to find out if you have it and how to get rid of it (ie bring it back to normal levels).
- Yeast pain is usually a new-onset pain, not a pain that has been around all along.
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- The yeast will slide over you slowly. If you’re paying attention, you may be able to reverse it with some natural remedies. If you’re not paying attention and it knocks you down, get drugs.
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- When you are a breastfeeding mother and you latch your baby directly to the breast with or without a nipple shield several times a day, symptoms will almost always appear on both nipples. Bilateral symptoms are a hallmark of yeast, as the yeast travels from the baby’s mouth to one nipple, to the other nipple, and back again.
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- You can re-infect yourself and your baby with the milk you expressed while it was yeasty. It’s okay to use this milk while you’re being treated for a yeast infection, but don’t give it to your baby after treatment is over.
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- You should, have to, have to treat both mother and baby to properly get rid of the yeast, even when the baby shows no signs of thrush.
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- It is a very good idea to treat for seven days after the cessation of symptoms. If you don’t, the yeast overgrowth will often come back.
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- The internet will send you down a dangerous rabbit hole that will convince you that every surface in your house is teeming with yeast. He will make You whiten and vinegar wash and boil everything you see! Don’t go down that rabbit hole. Just take the right medicines so you can feel better.
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- Yeast is very often misdiagnosed when the real culprit is vasospasm. Yeast treatment almost always makes vasospasms worse. So if you are being treated for a yeast infection and your symptoms worsen worse, no better, you were probably misdiagnosed with yeast when you actually had vasospasms.
Website design By BotEap.comThis is how I find out what’s wrong with a mommy’s nipples. I ask her a series of seemingly repetitive but important questions about how she feels:
- Is this a new pain or have you had pain all the time? If you’ve had pain all the time, is the pain suddenly different or worse now?
Website design By BotEap.comIt’s really rare to get a nipple yeast infection right after delivery, even if mom received antibiotics during labor. So, if she has been in pain since childbirth, it is most likely a latching problem that is causing subsequent nipple trauma. Nipple trauma left you susceptible to yeast overgrowth, which may have taken your nipple pain to a whole new level of intensity.
Website design By BotEap.comAlternatively, a fairly clear case of yeast is when the pain comes out of the blue after a period in which the mother has not been in pain. The new onset of pain after a pain-free period is rarely the latch and often is yeast.
- How do your nipples feel?
Website design By BotEap.comI care much more about what mom feels than what I see. I find that inspection of the nipples is often arbitrary. I can look at the nipples that look hot pink and Mom says they feel good, or I can think the nipples look good and she can say that she feels like someone is poking them with hot pokers.
- How would you describe the bread?
Website design By BotEap.comI spend a lot of time talking in great detail with mothers about their sore nipples.
Website design By BotEap.comThis is what yeast sounds like:
Website design By BotEap.com“Both nipples burn before, during and after feeding. When the baby is nursing on one breast, the other nipple burns. The burning sensation starts at my nipples and radiates to my breasts. I don’t like it when nothing touches my nipples, like a towel after a shower, because it feels so raw. It feels good to have my nipples open to the air.”
- Pumping usually doesn’t feel better for yeasty nipples.
Website design By BotEap.comIf you have pain when latching on, it often feels better to pump as the pump provides an even suction. But yeast is just as mad at pumping as it is at caring. So, I’m suspicious of yeast for a woman who says pumping doesn’t give her any relief.
Website design By BotEap.comOnce I’m pretty sure it’s yeast, I treat it. Now, I know there are a ton of all natural remedies, vinegar washes, laundry regimens, diet changes, gentian violet, grapefruit seed extract, etc., etc. I think these strategies are only worth considering for repetitive, difficult-to-treat yeast that doesn’t respond to medication alone. The vast majority of nipple yeast infections don’t require the stress and workload that accompany the maddening yeast eradication protocols mentioned above.
Website design By BotEap.comIf you prefer to start with a more natural remedy, go ahead! Give it about five days. If the symptoms improve, great! Keep going! If they get worse, you may need to consider taking medication.
Website design By BotEap.comWe treat mother and baby simultaneously for up to seven days after the cessation of symptoms.
Website design By BotEap.comThis can take three days or 30 days depending on how long the yeast has been festering.
Website design By BotEap.comWe treat seven days after being symptom free because yeast loves to shut down and hide so it will drop its guard and stop treating only to have it sprout again. When you think the yeast is gone, keep treating for another seven days to
Really get rid of it.
Website design By BotEap.comIf, after three to five days of treatment, the symptoms have significantly worsened, it is advisable to consider discontinuing treatment and retesting for vasospasm.
No yeast. If the symptoms feel the same or slightly better, continue with the treatment. It can take weeks to fight the yeast down to reasonable pain-free levels.
