Battling Thrush

[pinotgrig]

I'm so sorry.

anna7602 is an (unwilling) expert.

[winemaker06]

So sorry to hear this :-(
I battled it for a ridiculously long time with DS and just finished treatment with DD.

You AND the baby both MUST be treated. It kept coming back with DS because the pedi wouldn't treat him without evidence in his mouth. I finally insisted and succeeded in getting rid of it.

The second time I was iffy on it being thrush vs just damage. But burning pain between feedings was my final sign to make me do something.

This second kid was a much easier treatment since I knew what to do. Nystatin Rx for her mouth for 2 weeks (big PITA at 4x/day) and fluconazole for me for 2 weeks (400 mg first dose and then 200 mg per day). The midwife actually modified the Rx after researching because the recommended dose is higher than it used to be.

My LC said that gentian violet really does work the best. It stains everything purple, but you only have to use it once per day for 4 days. I went the Rx route, but 4 days instead of 2 weeks might have been preferable.

I have a plastic microwave sterilized and ran all pump parts, bottles, nipples, etc through that after every use while we were being treated.
I got rid of frozen milk (tossed 60 oz with DS :-( ) but you can give milk pumped while being treated during treatment, if that applies.
Used disposable nursing pads, changed them often. Used APNO / Triple Nipple Ointment several times a day because it has an antifungal in it. And washed all baby-related laundry in hot water.

Thankfully symptoms were gone within a week this time around. And I hope you have the same luck!

[winemaker06]

Re: tossing milk

It hurts so my LC recommended marking the bags and deciding later whether I wanted to trash them. Once I built up a stash After it was gone, it felt a little less terrible to toss it all. And I could have decided to take the risk and feed it if I wanted to.

[barefootcontessa]

I took the meds and just washed everything per normal routine and it went away. Baby was treated also.

[winemaker06]

spunbutterfly- the family physician situation sounds amazing! It would have made so many things easier.

I didn't know the gentian violet was controversial. Since I had luck getting an appt for the baby and my OB called in my Rx, I didn't look into it further.

Since you aren't being treated yet I wouldn't worry about laundry at all. As long as you'll use the items and rewash in hot before treatment is over.

[loira]

I have to say, I hated using gentian violet, buy that shit worked! We also got a prescription for Nystatin, and used that for 10 days, but because it was in a dropper, it didn't get on the insides of her lips. The pharmacist said to "swish it around the mouth" - ha, good luck with getting an infant to do that.

[AmyRI]

#1 priority is getting you and baby treated at the SAME time. I have lost count of the number of women on here that have had staggered treatments and end up with recurrent thrush.

I bleached nothing because I hate bleach. Everything was washed on hot with vinegar and dried hot or dried in the sun. Plastic things went in the dishwasher on heated dry because that gets hot enough to kill the yeast. Sterilizer or sani cycle or steam bags all work too.

My pedi called in an RX for DD without seeing her because I had a thrush DX and she knew DD needed to be treated whether she showed symptoms or not.

I was able to treat with Nystatin (cream for me, oral suspension for DD). Well, she ended up needing diflucan for awful yeast rashes but she didn't have oral thrush that we ever saw, and I only needed Nystatin.

Do not cut treatment short when you feel better. I went a full 2 weeks because I was terrified of it coming back.

I did get rid of it the first time, thankfully!

[AmyRI]

Aug 14, 2016 23:20:57 GMT -5 spunbutterfly said:

Aug 14, 2016 19:18:02 GMT -5 loira said:

I have to say, I hated using gentian violet, buy that shit worked! We also got a prescription for Nystatin, and used that for 10 days, but because it was in a dropper, it didn't get on the insides of her lips. The pharmacist said to "swish it around the mouth" - ha, good luck with getting an infant to do that.

Oh dear god.

I had a hard enough time getting him to open his mouth so I could try and wipe the white stuff on his tongue off to see if it was just milk crud (it involved a lot of crying on his part and swearing on my part).

It's less important that they drink every drop and more important that it gets all around. So squirt a little in each cheek with him laying on that side, and drop a little on his gums in the front if you can, and don't stress over dribbles.

[anna7602]

Aug 14, 2016 17:20:27 GMT -5 winemaker06 said:

Re: tossing milk

It hurts so my LC recommended marking the bags and deciding later whether I wanted to trash them. Once I built up a stash After it was gone, it felt a little less terrible to toss it all. And I could have decided to take the risk and feed it if I wanted to.

This is what I did. I basically added the equivalent of a scarlet A to all possible thrush bags. The LCs I talked to (friends and professionally) were divided on whether it was risky to feed a baby milk expressed during a thrush infection. I didn't throw them away, though, until I had plenty to replace the stash.

As for everything else, sanitize the heck out of everything. In addition to washing on hot, I added vinegar to my laundry loads, which is supposed to further disinfect. I also used bleach or color-safe bleach for another layer of disinfectant. And if there was any chance that even a sock had been washed on cold previously in a load with any thrushy items, that sock got rewashed on hot.

Another thing I add in way retrospect is that I was vulnerable to reinfection despite my zealous sanitizing because I had constant open wounds on my nipples due to DS's tongue and lip ties. It's a super long story, but basically, I am an overproducer and DS was getting plenty of milk with minimal effort, so it took a while for anyone to notice his ties. The first Specialist I took him to at 3.5 months didn't even want to clip his ties because his weight gain and weighted feeds were so good that she rationalized he had figured out how to compensate for the ties. Except that my nipples were a mess! I ended up taking him to a pediatric dentist for a second opinion and had his ties lasered there.