Dealing with thrush

After I wrote this post about overcoming our breastfeeding issues and having everything going so well, the universe decided I was being too cocky and hit both Annaliese and I with a pretty bad case of thrush.

Due to her poor latch at birth, she got blisters on the inside of her mouth - which I was assured was normal. So when it looked like she had some spit up residue on some of the blisters I didn't think anything of it. About a week and a half passed and I noticed it wasn't getting any better and her breath smelled really sour. I tried brushing the inside of her cheeks with an infant gum brush and when the white spots wouldn't brush away I realized what it was. At this point it had already spread to my nipples - explaining the pain I just thought was due to a latch regression.

We were able to get her medicine that night but by the following day I found it almost too painful to feed her and the thought of supplementing began to creep in. The next day I began experiencing pretty bad deep tissue pain and by the time I was able to get to the doctor I had a full blown infection. No bueno.

I found myself back in the same place I was just days after her birth - do I pump the milk and bottle feed her or do I try to feed her from the source. For me it goes back to wanting to be in control. I can control how fast the pump goes. If it hurts too much I simply stop, not having to break any painful latches. The pump cannot bite me. However, with the pump I find myself getting depressed at just how much I'm able to pump. I hear about the mothers of 10 month olds being able to pump 6 oz in a sitting, SIX! I'm lucky to get 3! Then I remind myself she's only 4 weeks old - that's all she needs.

Thrush for me has been extremely painful. I was naive and let it go untreated for far too long. I'm proud of myself that even after a 2am spit-up geyser that wasted 4 ounces of milk and resulted in a mommy pity party sob-fest, I didn't supplement. Besides, how can I justify giving anything but the best for this face?