Home remedies · Cycle & women’s health
No home remedy here replaces treatment, and none is talked down. What has done good for generations does good — even if no one ever measured it. Where something is well studied, it says so. Where it is only experience, it says that too.
Before feeding, warm the breast — a warm damp flannel, five minutes. Then latch the baby on with its chin towards the hard spot. After feeding, cool it: a cold washed white cabbage leaf rolled soft with a rolling pin, the thick rib cut out, laid in the bra for twenty minutes or until it wilts. Two or three times a day.
The order is the point. Warmth before the feed widens the ducts and eases the let-down reflex — it helps with emptying. Cold afterwards narrows the vessels and takes down the swelling that presses the duct shut from outside; warmth afterwards would add to the swelling. The chin towards the hard spot is no old wives’ tale: the baby’s tongue pulls hardest on the side the chin lies. With the cabbage leaf, the established part is the lasting, gentle cold following the whole curve — that a compound of the cabbage itself takes part is supposed but not shown. What decides, in every case, is the emptying.
Keep feeding, precisely from the affected breast — weaning during a blockage makes it worse. Do not massage hard and do not knead; the tissue swells further from that. Gentle stroking towards the nipple during the feed is enough. Do not wear the cabbage leaf continuously: it can damp milk production, which is wanted when weaning and not here.
With fever above 38.5 degrees, with shivering, with a red, overwarm, very painful area and a flu-like feeling — that becomes mastitis, and it should be seen quickly. Likewise if nothing loosens after twenty-four hours.
Have it assessed: bleeding outside the cycle or after the menopause, strong one-sided lower abdominal pain, fever with discharge, any new lump in the breast. In pregnancy almost anything is a reason to call. With mastitis and fever, do not wait longer than a day.