How I Cured My Mastitis Naturally

If you’ve ever suffered from mastitis, you know how painful and inconvenient it is. If you’ve wondered if there was a way to cure mastitis without using antibiotics, read more about my natural cure!

First of all – my apologies to the male readers in the audience. You know, like my husband and brother. Yes, this is a post about mastitus, which is related to breastfeeding. I don’t know if any of you have a husband like mine, but the few times – maybe twice – in my life that I have said the word “ovaries” out loud, he looks like he is going to throw up and jump out of his skin.

So I know this post may not be the highlight of my blogging career to you male readers, but it was just too good not to share! I had mastitis and was able to cure it completely without using antibiotics, and I wanted to share how I did it.

What is mastitis? Mastitis is an infection that occurs with nursing. It begins as a clogged milk duct, but becomes inflamed to the point of infection.

One day a few months ago, I woke up feeling crummy. By the afternoon, I had a fever, was soooo tired, and felt achy all over. At the time I thought I had picked up a flu, and I was just hoping no one else would get it. At the same time, though, I had some pain radiating from my right breast. It wasn’t incredibly severe, but definitely noticeable. I had never had mastitis, though this is my third baby, so it wasn’t even on my radar. My sister has had it a lot, and she was over. I said, “Jenny, do you think this could be mastitis?” I showed her the part near my underarm that was hurting (discreetly 🙂 ) and her face said it all.

I guess it was beginning to have that tell-tale red triangle that mastitis can have. I was distraught, because I REALLY did not want to take antibiotics. I do not respond well to medicines in general, and I felt like my gut had gotten all out of whack anyway and I was taking high probiotics to try to recover it. I did NOT want to erase all the work I’d done!

So I started researching.

The first place I went was my trusty local “crunchy moms” forum. Those women know everything. I followed their recommendations immediately, and within 48 hours was completely better. Here’s what they said to do:

• a homeopathic remedy called “ Phytolacca.” I know. I had never heard of it either! I found it at Whole Foods, but you can buy it on Amazon. I used 4-5 capsules every four hours.
• Sunflower Lecithin. Apparently this is great to use regularly if you are prone to mastitis, as it keeps the milk “thinner” and less likely to be clogged. I took three the first night, then six the next two days, with food.
• lots of water. Like any other infection, staying hydrated will flush things out. I drank a ridiculous amount of water. As much as I possibly could.
• I nursed as frequently as I could, then pumped some.
• I rested. I read somewhere that mastitis was the body’s way of telling moms to rest. I took the hint. I dropped everything essential and laid around as much as I could.
• Fresh garlic. I crushed up quite a few cloves a day into some hummus.
• Ibuprofen. I used this religiously every four hours for the first 24 hours of my infection.

One of the nursing specialists in my crunchy group said if my symptoms did not improve within 24 hours on the ibuprofen, then I should consider using antibiotics. Mastitis is NOT something you want to mess around with, because it can obviously lead to abscess.

Fortunately, using these remedies, I did feel better after 24 hours. It wasn’t a total recovery. I still felt like I had been hit with a truck, and was mildly sore in my breast. But my fever was basically gone, and the achy-ness.

I continued taking the sunflower lecithin while I was nursing to prevent other flare ups. And I definitely kept that Phytolacca on hand. I think that was really a big help. Several of the moms in my group said that they cured mastitis JUST by using Phytolacca.

I’d never used a homeopathic remedy before, and I was shocked at how well it worked. My mom has also had a lot of success with one for her sore muscles.

Have you ever used homeopathic remedies? Have you ever treated mastitis successfully at home?

 

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