oh, please God, not again

Yeah, that's right - I've got thrush.  Again. 

Julianna had her first ear infection and just finished her amoxicillin.  I had been blaming painful nursing on her biting.  But last night, it went from just a little painful into holy moly painful.  In the middle of the night, it hit me.  It's thrush, you idiot.  That's what I actually said out loud to myself around three o'clock, when she's nursing away and the pain was too much for me to doze thru.  So I got up this morning and really looked at my nipples (which I actually don't do all that often) and it was there - the tell tale signs, the white flakiness, the general just yuckiness of the whole thing.   

I don't think Julianna is a mad nursing fool the way her brother was.  I nursed Sam until well past his third birthday - but Julie just isn't that into it.  She really likes regular food - in fact, we've started calling her Julie Bottomless Pit Cohen, because she'll just eat and eat and eat.  Whatever Marc's got in a bowl, she wants and will scream until he delivers it to her.  So her nursing is tapering off and while she's far from all the way done with it, I can see that the end is in sight.  I just really don't want it to be because I'm starting another three months of utter nursing hell, thrush to multiple fissures leading to a staph infection and then topping it all off with a nice dose of ringworm.  I don't want to go there.  Not again.

So I'm taking an oral rx for a yeast infection, treating it topically with the anti-ringworm cream that worked last time.  Pumping on the side that hurts the most and I'll probably start giving Julie the nystatin as well.  I have checked with her pediatrician, but after the number of doctors I saw the last time this happened, I've learned that they don't actually know any better than I do about how to deal with nursing problems.