Beasty Yeasty

After talking to several people about my yeast/thrush experience and how I got rid of it, I realized I never passed on the info to my dear bloggy friends. Of course, I hope that none of you have to deal with it, but just in case.

How do you know if you have a thrush problem? Well, if you are breast feeding, it will (unfortunately) be painfully obvious. Itching, sharp pain in your chest, you know - unfun stuff. It will be different depending on exactly where in the bre@st it is, but you will at the very least know there is a problem. Things I read kept saying "nppls" (well, not exactly that but I'm sure you can figure it out :-) but that wasn't where my pain was so I wasn't sure if it was thrush or not. Don't let that fool you. Signs in the baby are white patches in the mouth and a rash that is bright red and doesn't respond to other treatments.

Diagnosis is sometimes easier for the breastfeeding dyad since you have twice as many ways to pick it up but even if only one of you is showing symptoms, treat both baby and mama! I didn't see any signs with Lucy at first but she obviously had it since I saw die off. If you don't, you'll just pass it back and forth. For a formula baby, you might only have a diaper rash that just won't go away and since you aren't in pain and aren't thinking about thrush, it will get bad before you know what you are dealing with so in my humble opinion, all mamas should be aware of yeast and know what to do! So what do you do?

First off, don't panic! You may have heard horror stories but it will be okay so take a deep breath. Yes, it's a yucky problem and the remedies are a pain but you can and will make it through.

But on the other side, don't mess around with a partial approach. Hit it hard and fast. Yeast will find any little thing you are missing and find a way to evade you if you aren't vigilant.

And don't stop breastfeeding. I know it hurts, I've been there. And if your little one likes to nurse a long time at night you might find yourself wanting to scream at times. But it will go away and you don't want to lose all that time together because of a few days of pain. Plus, even if you stop you'll both have it still and your milk really will help her little body fight it off.

Treat the body - inside

One of the reasons so many people struggle with reoccuring yeast/thrush is that they only treat the symptoms. Surface remedies are necessary and will help but you have to go deeper. Probiotics are great. My doctor recommended one with lactobacillus acidophillus with up to 10 billion units colonies once a day for me. Lucy got her dose through my milk but if you aren't nursing, there are baby probiotics out there. I just don't know much about them. I also took grapefruit seed extract capsules daily too.

But the biggest thing you can do to get rid of yeast is also the least fun. Yeast thrive on sugar so no sugar for you! I cut out all sugar at first, including white flour and even fruits. Once the pain was gone (just a day or two), I added a limited amount of fruit back in but I really was vigilant about keeping most sugar out of my diet for about a month. I meant to keep it up but with the traveling to my parents' so much and depending on neighbors for meals there, it just wasn't possible.

Treat the body - outside

There are several ways to treat thrush but almost as important as what you do is what you don't do. Yeast like moisture, that's why the problem areas are what they are, those areas are moist most or all of the time. But this means that many of the normal diaper rash and breastfeeding remedies like thick diaper creams and lanolin will actually make yeast worse by trapping in moisture. Get as much air time as possible. I closed all our blinds and went without a shirt/bra for several days. I felt like a hermit but it worked. This would be much harder if I had older kids or a job but even a topless nap everyday would help. And even though Lucy wasn't showing any signs, I had heard that as the yeast die off, diaper rash can get worse or appear where it wasn't before so I had her diaperless as much as possible. About 3 days after I started treating, she got a rash for about a day but it went away.

The most common drugs for yeast are Nystatin, Diflucan and Gentian Violet. The first is the most common but is notoriously ineffective. Diflucan is pretty strong stuff and Gentian Violet not only stains but has recently been associated with oral cancer. There isn't really enough information to say one way or the other whether that is true but I'm not taking chances. I didn't really want to go with any of those. The two main natural remedies are vinegar and grapefruit seed extract. I did both. I started with vinegar because it took me a little while to get my hands on g.s.e.

For skin treatments, dilute 1 Tablespoon of white vinegar in a cup of water. Apply with cotton balls to your bre@sts and q-tips to the inside of baby's mouth hourly and use it as your wipe solution for diaper areas. The pain was getting better but was still slight during long feedings after a couple days with vinegar. Once I got a hold of grapefruit seed extract, I used it instead of vinegar. I followed Dr. Gordan's plan and diluted 20 drops in 1 ounce of water and applied that in the same way as the vinegar solution. After I switched to that, the pain was gone within a day but I kept using it on both Lucy and I for a couple weeks more.

Now since you don't want to use normal creams, you might need an alternative. I used a bit of coconut oil on both Lucy and I. Coconut oil is antifungal but even so, I made sure it was fully absorbed before any redressing occured so moisture wasn't an issue.

Treat everything that might have touched the body - inside or out.

Now you might think that all of that would be enough but don't stop there. Yeast is a hard thing and will survive and come back another day if you don't get totally rid of it. Diapers, bras, burp rags, towels - anything that might have touched the yeast should be washed with g.s.e. or vinegar. Vinegar is cheap so I just added a cup to the final rinse of all my laundry loads to make sure I didn't miss anything. I switched to all prefolds since I thought I could get those cleaner than pockets or fitteds. Some people might want to switch to 'sposies but I thought that would only leave her open to irritation. I also line-dried all diapers, towels, burpies and bras in the sun. Lucy and I also slept on receiving blanket that got washed every day so I didn't have to change the sheets daily. If you use bottles, pacifiers or npple shields, you should sterilize those by boiling as well.

And be sure to wash your hands often. I am assuming you wash your hands after diaper changes but start washing them before diaper changes too to make sure you don't give your baby the yeast back again.

Now that may sound like a lot of work and it is. It's a big pain. But so is thrush, literally! And if you make sure to cut off yeast on all fronts right away, it shouldn't take that long before you get rid of it. Good luck!