Sometimes Life Keeps Throwing Curve Balls

I would like to say that I haven't posted in a while because I have been so amazingly busy with my beautiful little girl and loving every second of motherhood. Although, I am busy 99% of the time, my life as a Mother has thrown a few more curve balls. I am just warning that this is long but you have to know the background to understand the story.

It all started a few weeks after Addelynn was born and I noticed breastfeeding wasn't going as great as I had hoped. I was constantly in pain and when my milk came in it literally felt like it was boiling underneath my skin. After I would feed, I would be in pain for up to an hour afterwards and sometimes it would even keep me up at night. I kept asking my friends who had breastfed if this is normal and some were baffled and others said I must just have a powerful letdown. I let it go another week and then my aunt came down from California to visit. She breastfed both of her daughters (my mom didn't breastfeed for long) and I asked her the same questions and she said that definitely didn't sound right. Then, one morning I went to take a shower and my boobs looked like they had been burned, with bright red, hot to the touch splotches all over. I showed my mom and aunt who immediately agreed something wasn't right. We all figured mastitis and since it was a Saturday I called my Doc in hopes that they would just write me a prescription. Yeah, right...so I had to go to urgent care (who the doctor btw was someone from my old ward, yay...awkward!) and he diagnosed me with mastitis in both breasts and gave me a prescription. He said that I should feel relief in a few days but keep on the meds and follow up with my doctor in a week.

Lo and behold three days go by and I'm still in pain, so I call my doctors and end up going in to see them. At PPA (phoenix Perinatal Associates) you see random high risk doctors, well so he doesn't even check my boobs and tells me its either the start or end of mastitis. What!?! Well, which one is it? I've now been on meds for days and so he writes me another med that will definitely kill off the bacteria if this one doesn't work, but he's sure the meds I'm on will do the trick. So I finish up the ten day prescription and start the new one because of course I'm still in pain. I take the new miracle meds for another week and end up calling the doctors again because gosh darnit I'm still in freaking pain. I go back to the same doctor who is completely baffled that his miracle cure for bacteria infections didn't work and figures that it must be a fungal infection. This is now the third medication I am on.

I take these meds and in the meantime go to a lactation consultant to help me get Addey to latch better. What a blessing those ladies are! A few days after the last med I notice a tiny lump in my left breast. I call the lactation consultant who tells me it must be a clogged duct and gives me instructions on what to do for it. I do those things for a few days and the lump gets a little bigger. Well, Addey had to have an ultrasound on her hip so I decided to stop by Banner Deserts' lactation center and have one of the girls take a look at it. Yep, looks like a clogged duct and gives me more ways to loosen it up.

I do this for a few days and realize that it's just getting bigger. How in the world after all these things that I'm doing (btw try doing all these things while keeping your baby happy). For instance hot compressions 10 min before feeding, feed, then immediately after pump that breast. Yeah right, huh!?! I end up calling PPA back and telling them that I need to come back in. I go in and they tell me that since I'm already 6 weeks post pardom that I'm no longer with them (they only deal with pregnancies and then your post pardom checkup). Well, I don't have a regular obgyn because I pretty much severed ties with that lunatic. I am pretty much crying to my friends mom Dalia (sp?) and telling her that I am in so much pain, my baby is upset and fussy because of it all, and I just need someone to look at it. Afterall, they were the ones dealing with the infections from the get go and giving me all these meds, shouldn't then follow-up? Dalia calls my insurance and of course they comply because my insurance rocks. The doctor (who's husband is a surgeon) takes one look at my breast and says I'm 99% sure it's an abscess and the worst one I've seen yet in my career. You need to go straight to the ER. Okay, let's back up. Josh is on his way to work, my mom is in the lobby with my baby, ER????....what?!? I ask her if it can wait because by this point I'm a little overwhelmed and she says her husband could operate in the morning but she didn't want me to wait that long because it was really bad.

The doctor as I'm drying my tears, goes out and tells my mom the diagnosis. We would out a plan of how we would drive our cars to the hospital and have Josh meet us there. The doctor said there was no way she wanted Addelynn in the ER. I told mom I would call her and Dad that night after they drain or do surgery or whatever. Well, eight hours later I finally see a doctor (did I mention I hate ERs???) and haven't eaten since the morning because everyone kept saying they didn't know when surgery would be and I couldn't eat until they did. I'm crying to a nurse because I have to eat or I can lose my milk supply and she so rudely tells me that I probably won't be able to breastfeed again after the abscess to why bother...I wanted to hit her! Come to find out surgery would be 8am the next morning and I could have freaking ate something during my long ER wait! Anyway, they check me in...I call my parents who keep Addey for the night. Josh and his Dad give me a blessing and I hope for the best.

I see the surgeon the next morning and beg her just to jab a needle in my boob and drain the abscess (my friend had that done to hers). She informs me that it is too big of an abscess and it would most likely come back and I would have to be put down for surgery. Great! I love surgery! I start crying again because they are not sure if I will be able to breastfeed or not and my baby is only 7 weeks old. Finally her and Josh convince me regardless that this is the best and only way to ensure that the infection is gone.

I wake up from surgery with a huge open wound, not understanding why they couldn't stitch me up. I guess wounds heal from the inside out as I'm learning. All I can say is that I was not prepared for what I saw when they uncovered the bandages to change the packing. The surgeon said I had a golf ball size abscess. They did a test on the abscess to see what it was infected with and the results would come back two days later. I was prepared to go home that day when a nurse came in and told me that the wound came back positive for MRSA which is a drug resistance bacteria, a form of staph. All I remember is hearing on the news how schools were quarantined and closed for cleaning for this bacteria. I start crying again as I thought of my baby. Does she have it....is it in the breast milk? Hours later the nurse comes back and clarifies more. She said that it was only in the wound and not my blood. They still quarantined my room and put me on heavy IV meds. Looks like I would be staying a few more days.

Turns out that when I was breastfeeding Addelynn in the hospital when she was born, she cracked my nipple and I caught staph. I never had mastitis, or a fungal infection. I had a staph infection for 7 weeks until it got so bad I developed an abscess that had to be surgically removed. The doctor informed me that with my symptoms any doctor would have thought mastitis, but after the first couple meds I should have gotten an ultrasound for further detection. The MRSA came from all the meds killing the good bacteria and turning into the drug resistant MRSA bacteria. Let me tell you...boy has it been an ordeal!

It's been 3 weeks or so and I'm still healing. Josh packs my wound everyday and the surgeon says about two more weeks or so of packing and I should be good. I have to pump and dump because of the heavy meds and switched to formula. I can just now start introducing my breast milk back to Addey. I can't feed her from the left side until the wound is no longer open. I have just now been able to look at my wound. Josh says it looks ten times better than it first did which makes me happy.

I am so grateful that I stuck to my instincts and kept going to the doctor because I could have lost alot of breast tissue from the infection. Through these trails my faith continues to strengthen as I realize I have a loving Heavenly Father looking over me. I never imagined spending a day away from my baby and I ended up spending 5 nights away from her. It has been very humbling and I'm still learning that I don't have control over alot of things. Sometimes the world happens and we have to roll with it. I can only pray that I heal to my liking and that my baby stays healthy and happy through this all.

This is not normal I've been told...go figure! I did want to post it though in case sometime down the road someone has the same symptoms. I am healing though and am feeling better every day. I am just looking forward to feeling myself because Addelynn is now 10 weeks old and since she's been born I've been on some sort of medication for the bacteria or pain. I took my last pill Saturday and hope that it's smooth sailing from this point on. Knock on wood!