You see the white mark on your babies tongue, and you think no big deal its just milk stains. More often than not that is all it is. When you go in to wipe it out with a wet towel it should come right off, if you notice that it does not you may want to look further into it. I first noticed the white spots in my daughter’s mouth and would wipe them out, no big deal. Then over a week’s time it went from being a thin layer of white on her tongue to thick patch like dots. In a matter of hours it seemed, there were also dot like white patches on her inner cheeks and on the inside of her top lip. I called her pediatrician to see if it could possibly be thrush and what she wanted me to do. My mother told me that in the “old days” a mother would take a cloth diaper after the baby had peed in it and use it to wipe the inside of the mouth. This procedure was used to treat the thrush, gross! Since I do not use cloth diapers, nor do I feel comfortable rubbing pee into my baby’s mouth I took her to the doctor.
Thrush is a fungal infection that is caused by a yeast called candida. Believe it or not it is quite common and many babies get thrush in their first few weeks of life. Sometimes thrush can cause mild mouth discomfort but should not be so painful that it interferes with your baby’s ability to nurse. Candida already lives in the mouth and other parts of the body. Generally use of antibiotics or too much moisture can cause the yeast to grow and that causes the thrush. Breast feeding mothers can sometimes contract the thrush on their nipples so proper cleansing of the breast must be taken in order to avoid a flare up.
After the doctor looked in my daughters mouth and decided that she definitely has thrush, she gave me a long list of things to do and not do. First she prescribed to me a oral medication called Nystatin. I was instructed to give her the medicine 4 times a day after meals or at least 30 minutes before. The medication states that it is no longer good once it is swallowed, this really irritated me because an infant swallows anything you put in their mouth so I was concerned if it would work at all. The doctor also told me to put the medicine on a q-tip and swab it directly on the patches in her mouth instead of squirting it into each cheek. Since I am a breast feeding mother she told me to put the nystatin to any irritated areas on my nipples, but when I did that all I noticed was an intense burning sensation so I didn’t do that again. Another thing the doctor told me was to restrict the use of a pacifier unless it is really needed to calm the baby, because it harbors the infection and makes it take longer to treat. If your baby is anything like mine she needs her pacifier so that was not fun. The doctor also told me if the baby developed a diaper rash that it was due to the thrush .
It has now been a few weeks since my daughter first showed symptoms of thrush. The verdict? Nystatin takes a while to make the thrush better. In my daughter’s case, the thrush actually got worse and it took almost a week and a half for me to see any significant clear up. She did get a diaper rash quite bad, and still today I am swabbing nystatin into her mouth and desitin on her bottom. If your baby has thrush and you are using nystatin, do not stop usage if you notice that the thrush has cleared up. I did that and it just came right back again. Keep on using the medication for at least 7 days after you notice clear up. I don’t recommend giving your baby a pacifier and if it is a must, boil it every few hours just to be sure you are getting rid of the infection that may hang around on it.
