Fighting the good fight

Well, maybe not the good fight, but Liam is 6 1/2 months old and we are still fighting...
THRUSH!
Even though I was never prone to yeast infections before, for some reason when I breastfeed thrush is a constant irritant. With Kayden I did not know there was a problem until I was changing his diaper after a midnight feed and noticed blood on his face... from my poor nipples. Then I took notice of the white spots in his mouth. We were both treated and it went away pretty quickly.
This time Liam and I have not been that lucky. Liam has never had the white spots but we really cant get rid of the yeast-y infection this time! At around 6 week nursing one particular side(aka super boob) was so painful I cried when he first latched on, for every single feed. We tried Nystatin, which helped a little but never really got rid of it.
So my search began for other treatments. I ran across Gentian Violet and was impressed with what moms had to say about it so I ordered a bottle from Amazon.  I promptly applied it(to not just the nipple but the entire areola), let it dry for a while and put on a shirt I didn't care about ruining. Gentian Violet stains. REALLY stains. They use it to mark people before surgery because it takes forever to wash off skin and never washes off clothing.
Then... Liam was hungry. So I fed him.

I love how concerned he looks! Like he knows he looks like a sad clown after a night out on the town.

His mouth was not back to normal for 3 days!!
But, with more careful application, after a week or so I was feeling a million times better! Sure, all of my nursing tanks had purple splotches in them, but I no longer had fire nipple so it was a fair trade off!

Then.... I got strep throat. REALLY painful strep throat that I was given amoxicillin for. There is nothing that will bring a yeast infection screaming back like a strong course of antibiotics. We were back where we started and now it was EVERYWHERE! We took probiotics, washed things in vinegar and hot HOT water, nystatin ointment and nothing happened. It just got worse.
Then after 3 weeks the strep CAME BACK! Now I am on a zpak and still suffering through yeast-y skin infections even after going on a course of Diflucan to counteract the antibiotics.
I went back to my old standby, Gentian Violet and the thrush is gone! While I can't use it on other areas of concern(broken skin + gentian violet = a tattoo) I am so happy that I get results from Gentian Violet so I wanted to spread the word!