Feeling Icky

I've not been feeling 100% over the last week. On Wednesday I started to feel a bit bunged up and fluey, and my armpit felt like someone had been snapping elastic bands in it. I ignored it for most of the morning, but as I began to feel worse towards lunchtime, I thought I'd better make an appointment with the doctor.

I remembered reading about mastitis when I was pregnant, and it sounded like that was a possibility, as my daughter has just started reducing her feeds as she takes more solids. If it was mastitis, then I knew I needed to make sure that I tried to clear any blocked ducts. The advice given in all the NHS booklets is along the lines of "keep feeding your child, whilst gently massaging". Easier said than done.

To be on the safe side, I carried on feeding my daughter from the sore side (not amusing, I can assure you - imagine having a very large, very painful bruise, and at regular intervals someone tugs on it, whilst you prod it in every other direction). It felt a little better, so I hoped that maybe I'd caught it soon enough, but when I woke the next morning I felt absolutely dreadful. I felt as though I had a full-on case of flu. I have not felt so ill since I had glandular fever at university. Never have I been so grateful for N still being at home as I was in no state to look after our daughter.

N took me up to the doctors, where he confirmed that I did indeed have mastitis, and prescribed a course of antibiotics to help the infection. We went straight to the pharmacist to fill the prescription and I've essentially been sleeping since. I still can't believe how exhausted I am; I've got a young baby for goodness sake, you think I'd be used to being tired. At the moment though, I just can't do more than a couple of hours before being shattered and needing another sleep.

What I was really shocked about (perhaps naively) was the huge list of contraindications on the antibiotics. Aside from the fact that these things look like horse pills, there are horrific side effects that I may not notice until "several weeks after the course of medication is complete" and that it is possible to pass some of these side effects on to my daughter as I'm still breastfeeding. I'm assuming that these are suitable tablets as I talked to the doctor about breastfeeding, but it does seem slightly contrary to common sense that the medication for an illness commonly found in breastfeeding mothers is potentially harmful to a young baby being breastfed. Luckily our daughter seems to be ok so far (touch wood) so that's ok.

The other problem is that my eating and sleeping is now heavily regimented. These tablets are so strong they have to be spaced evenly apart (where other tablets say "you should try to take them spaced evenly" these say "you MUST take them at regular intervals") and I can't eat for 2 hours before or 1 hour after each tablet. This means that I can only eat in 3 hour slots, and by the time we've put our daughter to bed and had dinner it's so close to the next tablet that it's not worth me going to bed, only to get up to take a tablet, so I've ended up staying up until midnight, when all I've wanted to do is to crawl into bed as soon as possible.

Luckily N has been an absolute star. He has been entertaining our daughter, taking her out and about so that I can sleep, and generally looking after me in the best possible way. I'm very lucky to have him, and even luckier that we've both been in the position to be at home for the first 5 months of our daughter's life.

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In other illness-related news, my grandfather has had another funny turn and is back in hospital, this time needing a pacemaker. Although it probably seems a little callous of me to just mention this as an addendum, it is not really a major thing; firstly because the operation is simple; secondly because it will improve his quality of life onehundredfold; and thirdly because everyone is so un-bothered by it that my mum told me of his latest wobble via email. Not exactly rushing the news through!