For years we have been emphasizing in the blog the need for health professionals to recycle and learn, as soon as possible, everything related to breastfeeding when it is going well, so as not to end breastfeeding through erroneous advice, and when it goes wrong, to provide solutions that allow the mother to continue breastfeeding.
Solutions That's what i needed Sofia Bonilla, mother of a baby she was breastfeeding, when she went to the hospital up to five times because her chest hurt and she had a fever. I suffered a mastitis and the treatment was wrong to the point that they had to extract half a liter of pus from the chest, of the incredible infection he had.
Doctors who know about breastfeeding when everything is going well
And when I say doctors, I mean family doctors, gynecologists, midwives, nurses, pediatricians and all those who treat breastfeeding mothers and their babies. Health professionals who know about breastfeeding so that they allow a mother and a baby to continue their breastfeeding process normally and do not spread false myths and advice that can only help everything go wrong. Professionals who know:
- That breastfeeding it is given on demand and not every 3 hours: on demand it is without schedule.
- That you don't have to stop breastfeeding at 10 minutes, or at 15, then move on to the other: you have to leave Let the baby let go whenever he wants.
- That breastfed babies often wake up at night and that the strange thing is that a baby sleeps all night.
- That mothers they can take many medications despite breastfeeding, and they usually don't have to choose between breastfeeding and medicating.
- That there is no poor quality milk, which feeds babies little: all breast milk is good for your baby. What you have to look at is that there is enough milk.
- That the pacifiers in the first weeks is better not to give them, for risk of confusion.
- That breastfed babies they don't need to drink water: breast milk contains all the water they need.
- That complementary feeding has to complement breastfeeding and not replace it, because it is impossible to maintain a breastfeeding with one shot in the morning and another at night (in addition to dangerous).
- Etc.
Doctors who know about breastfeeding when something goes wrong
The first ones are necessary so that ("Virgencita, that I stay as I am") if something goes well, it continues to go well. The seconds, so that in case something goes wrong women receive real and adequate solutions and they can continue doing what is most advisable for both of them and what is probably the desire of the mothers. They do not go to the doctor to tell them "you must stop breastfeeding and you must give a bottle", because they already know that solution; You can take it at any time: go to the pharmacy, buy milk and bottles and go. No need to go to the doctor for that. They go because they want to continue breastfeeding and cannot, and need real, professional solutions that know:
- That the solution to a breastfeeding problem does not have to be a bottle.
- Than it is not normal that after a few days the act of breastfeeding continues to hurt.
- That they know to see when the position of the baby is not correct and help to improve the grip.
- Let them know how to treat cracks and how to help the mother to heal before.
- That they know how to see when a baby has a lingual frenulum that must be intervened urgently (every frenulum that affects breastfeeding should be intervened in a matter of minutes, if not hours, because it depends on the mother's ability to continue breastfeeding).
- Let them know that when a baby is eating little there could be hypogalactia and that you have to study pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum, not only looking at the position of the baby, but doing analytical to the mother.
- Let them know what to do when a mother has chest pain, is red and has a fever.
- Etc.
Let them know what to do when a mother has a mastitis
Sofia Bonilla is the affected mom Is what i had Sofia, a mastitis, a chest infection. He went to the Reina Sofía hospital in Córdoba and was treated there. A treatment that was not effective because he had to return again and again, up to five times, for help, until the infection was so immense, it had spread so much, that in another hospital they had to extract half a liter of pus. Faced with such an event, he can no longer breastfeed from that breast and has had to continue alone with the other.
As we read in Diario Córdoba, Sofia has decided to report the hospital because as a result of the "Malpractice carried out by different professionals of Reina Sofía, I was finally forced to go to the hospital in Montilla, where I was surgically operated on a breast abscess of about five centimeters in size, from which I extracted half a liter of pus".
They did not make a milk culture
What is the appropriate method of treatment for an infection? Take a sample, if possible, and analyze it to see if bacteria are causing an infection, with an antibiogram that says which antibiotic is suitable for that bacteria (s). In the case of liquid fluids, the sampling is very easy, because we talk about collecting some urine or some breast milk and analyzing it, but just as with urine it is always done, with breast milk it is not usually done.
It is not usually done because it is not usual and it is not usually done because once you do a culture you have to know how to read the results: in breast milk there are bacteria naturally present in constant balance. What you need to know is when they have become unbalanced and one of them has taken the initiative producing an infection, and then treat it.
If you do not look, if you do not know what antibiotic should be given, at least one that is known to be most effective in mastitis should be offered: ciprofloxacin (It is not the right thing, because the right thing is to do the cultivation, but in its absence, at least it is the least incorrect). Instead, what is usually done is to give a broad-spectrum antibiotic, the well-known Augmentine (amoxicillin and clavulanic acid) that can be used if it is effective for the key bacteria in the infection or can aggravate mastitis if it just attacks bacteria that They are in the minority, leaving the culprit even more free to continue reproducing.
He was recommended to stop breastfeeding
Not only do you have to grow the milk and give the appropriate antibiotic, but you have to encourage the mother to continue breastfeeding the baby on that breast, because the more milk that is retained, the greater the infection: the milk has to flow, the production must continue and it must be extracted to avoid this milk retention.
However, as this mom says: "My son is currently receiving breastfeeding thanks to my effort, since what each of the doctors who treated me at the Reina Sofía hospital was recommending me is to stop breastfeeding. In addition, I have appreciated the poor training in breastfeeding a good part of the doctors of this center, since the first thing they tell you is that you leave it, even knowing that it is the best for raising children ".
But it is not the only one
Here we have only explained the case of Sofia because she is the one we know from the press, but like her there are hundreds of women who have experienced similar situations. Mastitis that is not solved, that try to be treated with homeopathy, that end up becoming abscess and must be drained and women who end up in the operating room to open and in the worst case remove part of the chest, etc.
Antibiotics, or probiotics
Another thing they probably don't know is that Many mastitis can be solved only with probiotics, without the need for antibiotics. As we have just commented, a mastitis is an imbalance in the number of bacteria in breast milk (there are more than 700 types of bacteria), and this imbalance can be solved with the antibiotic that ends the one that is promoting that mess. Another option is to use probiotics, which, as we explained a while ago, are substances that contain live microorganisms which, supplied in adequate quantity, confer a beneficial effect on the health of the host.
But this, obviously, is a knowledge still available to very few professionals. Therefore, I insist: we need doctors who know about breastfeeding, and we need them for yesterday.
Photos | Christyscherrer on Flickr, iStock
In Babies and more | Can we trust pediatricians when talking about breastfeeding ?, Ah, but is it that pediatricians are not lactation consultants ?, Be very careful with the leaves of pediatricians and nurses: they can end breastfeeding
