Staphylococcus in breast milk: causes, symptoms and treatment

The birth of the long-awaited child brings not only great happiness, but also a lot of difficulties. One of the problems that young mothers may encounter in the hospital ward of the hospital is staphylococcus in breast milk. If he is suddenly found, some doctors insist on immediately stop breastfeeding and start drinking antibiotics. Others, on the contrary, require an increase in the number of feedings and no treatment is prescribed. Which of them is right? Where in the milk could take staphylococcus aureus? How to get rid of it? What it is dangerous for babies? Let's see what specialists think about this.

Meet: Staphylococcus in all its glory

This microbe was called staphylococcus, starting from the Greek words "stafili", which means "grapes", and "cocci", that is, "grains." Staphylococci have the appearance of round granules, gathering in colonies, like bunches of grapes. There are 27 species in their family, but only four are pathogenic.

1. Staphylococcus aureus. In breast milk, it is found more often than other species.

2. Epidermal (causes sepsis and epidermitis).

3. Saprophytic (leads to urethritis and cystitis).

4. Hemolytic (provokes purulent inflammation of the skin, sepsis and a number of other ailments).

Staphylococcus aureus is the most dangerous because it is capable of causing the greatest number of diseases and affecting the skin, mucous membranes, lungs, head and bone marrow, and the gastrointestinal tract. This kind of microbes is also dangerous because it has managed to adapt to all the measures to combat it. So, there is a group of Staphylococcus aureus, called Methicillin-Resistant. Its representatives are unresponsive to penicillins and cephalosporins, oxacillins, methicillins. Their harmfulness consists in the fact that they are unusually tenacious, do not die in the sun, they remain dry, they can tolerate boiling temperature up to 150 degrees for 10 minutes, they do not want to "swim" in medical alcohol, but convert hydrogen peroxide into their food.

Where in the hospital does staphylococcus take

According to statistics, each of us has several millions of bacteria. They settled all the niches of the environment. Staphylococcus is also omnipresent. It is in the air, in the water, in the earth, on the surfaces to which we touch. Moreover, he lives in us and in us. Therefore, it is impossible to completely get rid of it. Infection with staphylococcus can occur anywhere. In the maternity hospital, it is found on poorly crafted tools, on snow-white dressing gowns of medical staff, on any surfaces, just in the air. Of course, it is present on the body of women in childbirth and on their clothes. Sanitary workers and nurses regularly perform sanitation, but no matter how thorough it may be, new staphylococci quickly re-colonize the room. They are brought in by witnesses or by the medical staff themselves, they come to the ward with food or with things brought for the mother or for the baby. Staphylococcus can be caught in the following ways:

• Through the toolkit;
• Airborne droplets;
• Contact;
• With poorly processed food.

It is not necessary to panic about this, because these microbes do not always cause disease.

How staphylococci enter the breast milk

Many are puzzled: where can staphylococcus in breast milk come from, if the mother is absolutely healthy? As we have already described, this microbe is everywhere, even in those maternity hospitals where regular sanitation is regularly conducted. On the body of mothers, he also multiplies with pleasure. To prevent it from happening at all, the woman in childbirth should change her clothes several times a day, putting on only boiled and ironed food, and, moreover, to swim daily. In practice, this is difficult to implement. It is much easier before each feeding to thoroughly wash your chest and hands. Previously, in maternity hospitals, it was additionally required before wiping the nipples with a solution of furacilin. Especially carefully it is necessary to process a nipple on which cracks were formed. In these cases, staphylococci, sitting on the skin and clothing, easily fall into the wound and immediately begin to multiply there. Without treatment, a woman can develop a dangerous disease - infectious mastitis. Staphylococcus in breast milk appears precisely from these wounds and microbes infected with milk ducts. Another reason - the presence of this infection in the body of a pregnant woman, left without treatment. In this case, the microbe enters the milk through the lymphatic vessels. Sometimes a woman does not even suspect that her body has a staphylococcal infection, so she is sluggish and asymptomatic.

For whom staphylococcus is dangerous

The microorganisms present in breast milk first enter the baby's mouth and then into his digestive tract, but pathological conditions do not always occur. Mother's milk, being the richest source of vitamins, among other things, supplies the baby with important antibodies, which are successfully combating microbes, including staphylococcus aureus. Therefore, most children's organisms do not react in any way to the presence of these microbes. They can cause disease in such children:

• Premature babies;
• Born with pathologies;
• Very weak, with low weight;
• Who have been fed from the first days of life.

Staphylococcus in infants: symptoms of internal organs and mucous membranes

A dangerous microbe can infect the baby's mucosa. Thus there are such signs:

• temperature;
• cough;
• "Gagged" mouth;
• Coryza with purulent discharge.

If staphylococcus enters the kidneys of the digestive tract, it starts enterocolitis. His symptoms are:

• Liquid loose stool with mucus;
• Refusal to eat, capriciousness;
• Bloating;
• Vomiting;
• Heightened anxiety;
• Colic;
• temperature.

Most often in infants infected with staphylococcus, conjunctivitis is observed. Symptoms of the disease:

• Sour eyes (waking up, the baby finds it difficult to open them);
• Redness and swelling of the eyelids;
• temperature.

When these symptoms appear, you need to consult a doctor, and not to do self-diagnosis and treatment with folk methods in the form of eye rinses, because the staphylococcus, driven inside, will develop further.

Symptoms of Staphylococcus aureus

A variety of rashes may also indicate staphylococcus in the infant. Symptoms of skin lesions often indicate such ailments:

1. Phlegmon. At the same time, the temperature is increased in the cola, reddened swellings are observed on the skin, the child reacts very painfully to the touch.

2. Abscess. It is also accompanied by an increase in temperature, capriciousness, refusal of food. Pustules spread throughout the body. The skin around them becomes inflamed. When pressing from them, yellow-green pus follows.

3. Pimple. Starting with the few bubble rashes that many parents take for a non-hazardous allergic reaction to diapers, this disease goes into sepsis without proper treatment. Signs of "dangerous" bubbles are common: the capriciousness of the child, the rise in temperature, the reluctance to eat.

4. Sepsis. This terrible disease often causes not staphylococcus in breast milk, but infection of the umbilical wound by the medical staff or mother. Also, other, more mild diseases caused by staphylococcus in milk can develop into septicemia.

Diagnostics

When suspected of staphylococcus a child takes the following tests:

• Sowing from the nasopharynx;
• Scraping of the skin;
• Blood test (from the finger);
• Bakposev feces;
• Bacussis of mucus.

Analysis of breast milk for staphylococcus is also carried out, but its positive result is not determinative. The fact is that you must take the analysis in 100% sterile environment, which is almost impossible to achieve in our laboratories.

To quit or not to give breastfeeding

A number of doctors insist that if a staphylococcus is found, breastfeeding should be stopped, the mother should be treated with antibiotics, and only when the titers are completely free from staphylococcus, continue feeding the baby with the breast. Most doctors, including the famous pediatrician Komarovsky, do not share this opinion. Mother's milk contains antibodies, which are not present in any infant formula. They protect the child not only from staphylococcus, but also from other dangerous microbes. Therefore, continue to breastfeed the baby is necessary. Of course, a woman must at the same time carefully meet all hygiene requirements. Doctors recommend switching to artificial feeding only in especially severe cases, when a woman is diagnosed with severe diseases caused by staphylococci.

Breastfeeding with infectious mastitis

This ailment often affects first-time women giving birth, because they do not immediately know how to correctly apply the baby to the breast and control the milk's flow to the mammary gland. In the first case, the wound appears on the nipple, which immediately populate staphylococci. In the second case, the milk stagnates, lactostasis begins, the tissues of the mammary gland become inflamed. If the inflammation begins, and staphylococcus is found in breast milk, the woman should not only not throw the feeding, but, on the contrary, apply the crumb to the breast more often than usual. In some cases, an additional pumping is required after the feeding. Sometimes, according to the testimony of a woman, a cut is made on the chest so that the pus can get out. At the same time, a course of therapy with antibiotics is being conducted. Breaking breastfeeding is necessary only if pus, together with milk, is secreted by pus. Then the breast is emptied with a breast pump, and after the disappearance of the pus, lactation is continued again.

Treatment

Antibiotics against staphylococcus, especially golden, to pick up is not easy. In order not to make a mistake with a choice, you need to do an antibiotic. Most doctors prescribe "Clarithromycin", "Lincomycin", "Azithromycin", "Roxithromycin", "Vancomycin", but to get rid of methicillin-resistant streptococci these drugs may not work.

Good results are given by preparations of bacteriophages that "work" with all groups of bacteria.

In a complex doctors can prescribe probiotics and immunostimulants.

Perfectly kills staphylococcus an ordinary zelenka, so it must necessarily lubricate the nipples, if they are wounded.