Its not thrush!

A little bit of a rant here so be warned ..  thrush (candida) is totally over diagnosed . Any mother that has sore nipples after one week is generally told that she has thrush .  In my 5.5 years of being in private practice , seeing hundreds of mothers , I've seen real thrush less than 10 times. A baby with a white tongue does not have thrush - it may have a slight runny nose and be breathing through its mouth.. it may have a tongue tie - where the tongue does not move freely so  fluids and secretions such as breastmilk do not wash off easily. Or it may just have a white tongue !
If someone tells you that you have thrush - unless there is white /greyish streaks on the inside of your babys cheeks not on the tongue , they should be checking your latch first. If you have any disortion of nipple shape after feeding - thats whats causing the pain not thrush.  Get a IBCLC who is experienced in assessing tongue tie to check  your baby.  (not all are ...).
There  are no figures available for incidence of candida in the breast but Tom Hale who has done alot of the research into the drugs used for treating it is now saying he thinks its very very rare ....most cases of deep breast pain are due to an underlying infection.
Next topic is going to be tongue ties - and I've a big announcement :)

3 comments:

Fiona L. said...

OMG , very excited to hear the news .......

Carlota said...

I was diagnosed with thrush in Rotunda and treated for a very long time because it didn't get better... maybe it wasn't thrush at all!

Special Physician said...

Shocking to hear that there are so many people who are wrongly diagnosed with thrush.