If there are two words that you never want to hear strung together in a sentence… its breast and infection. The visual of that alone is enough to put me in a state of convulsive horror. However, surprisingly enough, a breast infection is not the visual catastrophe as the phrase may imply, but rather an infection inside your breast. In short, it is a clogged milk duct. Still gross sounding non the less.
How do I know all this about breast infections you may ask? Yes… you guessed it… I had one.
If you do not take care of them immediately, most often a doctor will put you on antibiotics. I called my doula Sage when I got mine, who told me I had 24 hours to try and get better on my own before I should go see a doctor. So this is what I did to get rid of it, and lucky for me, I was able to heal with natural remedies.
1) The second you know you have one ACT IMMEDIATELY. For me, I felt super tired, had a headache, and felt feverish. I maybe would have assumed I was sick, except for the soreness on the side of my boob close to my armpit. That tenderness made me know it was a breast infection.
2) Get organic purple cabbage and put it in your bra. Yes. Do it. Something about the cabbage helps. I swear.
3) Have the baby nurse on the infected side. (Remember… it is not really an infection… but a clogged duct. The baby can suck it out. Kinda like a kidney stone that needs to pass. You should point the baby’s chin towards where it is sore. So for me, that meant doing the football hold.
4) NURSE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE (May be a little tender, but do it. The baby will help you work it out!
5) APPLY HEAT! Either by taken baths, showers, or a heating pad. Or all 3.
6) Massage the sore spot (especially after you have heated it)
7) Take vitamin C
8) Drink massive amounts of orange juice (more vitamin C)
9) Drink INSANE amounts of water. Like so much water that you wish you wore a diaper you will be peeing so much. (Helps flush it out and hydrate you).
10) Take Echinacea pills (as much as the dose will let you in a day.
11) Drink Echinacea tea (one cup every 2 hours).
12) Eat oranges
I swear on everything holy that these above things worked for me. But YOU HAVE TO DO ALL OF THEM! Send someone out to get you anything you don’t have! You need to do everything! I know, maybe it seems like a lot, but it really helped me. I was better in about 12 hours.
