Mastitis

Everything was going well with my post partum recovery until Sunday. As you may know, I had mastitis (a breast infection) twice with Addison, once 10 days after she was born (on Christmas Eve) and again when I was weaning her a year later (on Christmas Day). I had expected that I would end up with mastitis again with Kennedy, however, I was hopeful that I would be proved wrong. Sadly I am an expert in the signs and symptoms of mastitis and was pretty sure on Sunday morning that I was getting it, but I was hoping that I was just being paranoid and it would turn out to be nothing. I decided to hold out until Monday so I could have an appointment with my midwife and I wanted to make sure that it was indeed mastitis.

Sure enough I woke up Monday morning and all of the symptoms (minus the temperature) were present. I was able to get an appointment with Sarah, my midwife, and she prescribed me antibiotics to take for 10 days and a pain reliever, as mastitis is extremely painful! Sarah told me that I should expect to feel better once I have taken the antibiotics for 24 hours but I may still spike a fever, but hopefully we caught it early enough that I would be spared the fever and chills. Well, about 6:30PM on Monday I could feel the fever coming on and although my temperature was 98.6F at that point, less than 2 hours later it was 102.6F. I was shivering, yet burning up, and couldn't get comfortable....I was miserable! Luckily by 10:30PM the fever broke and I felt SO MUCH BETTER. Let me tell you, I would so much rather give birth than have mastitis again. Cross your fingers that this is my last bout and things will be smooth sailing from here on out.