Bleeding;Pain and Swollen Breasts After Abortion;Help!!

Bleeding;Pain and Swollen Breasts After Abortion;Help!!

Dear Doctor,

Sir, I will be very happy if you will be able to answer and publish my questions this next week. Please I need the answer urgently also that my mates out there can learn. I am a regular reader of your column every Thursday in Daily Sun till I had a problem which I will want you to help me with. I am a girl of 20 years old who just removed a baby; it is two weeks now and since then I have been bleeding but now it is not as heavy as the very first week and now it´s not even reddish like blood, it´s just brownish colour. In fact, I stopped putting pad and just wear my pant; when I am wet then I will go and change because, I see it as wasting of pad since the thing is not much. Two days after the removal of the baby, my breasts became swollen and sometimes it will be paining me and by that time water will be dropping from my breasts. This continued till Sunday last week when it stopped and my breast now became too soft and had come back to the normal size. My question now is, are there some foods and drugs that I need to take? If yes, please prescribe them for me. Secondly, since that time I noticed that from my navel down to my waist /abdomen; even my waist is paining me. I forgot to tell you at the beginning that I  gave birth to the 3 months and 14 days old baby, in fact, I was placed on drip. I took about seven  (7) bottles of drip. It was the eighth (8) one which was on the 4th day that the baby came out with the placenta. Please doctor, if there is some precautions I have to take now before it is too late; please tell me and advice me on other things to do.

Amanda, Awka, Anambra

Dear Amanda,

Haba!!!You do not want to be removing babies at 20 years of age; do you? Babies only come when we have sex. Sex is best inside marriage. So, the age old advice remains, abstain if you do not want a baby; okay? But if you cannot abstain then, to be sure you do not get into unwanted pregnancy trouble again, you need to learn Fertility Awareness and Control. You will learn more about this at my blog www.mediamedix.blogspot.com.  If you cannot go to the blog and you want the gist here it is -- as a lady the length of your menstrual cycle (number of days) if divided by 3 (eg 28 days divided by 3) = 9.3 days. To get pregnant, have sex in the middle one-third days; to avoid pregnancy, never have sex in the 9 days in the middle one third. That's a rough rule but I will send my free report titled, "Fertility Awareness and Control" to anyone who asks for it by e mail. Now for your other concerns-- Every new mother bleeds for some time after birth and it is normal that the stuff coming out will first be blood red and later be less copious and change colour to brown. We call the stuff lochia. In the same manner, it is normal for your breasts to drip fluid and pain you -- after all if you had not removed the baby you are supposed to be breastfeeding the baby. It is the breast milk which your breast produced in response to the baby's presence that caused your breast discomfort. The pain in your pelvis (from navel down to waist) is best evaluated by a competent doctor/gynecologist. It is possible you contacted Pelvic Inflammatory Disease ( PID) in a mild form. It would need expert treatment so that it does not  block your tubes and make you unable to get pregnant in future. 8 "drips" show that the baby you removed was unripe to come out and you really had to force it to come out. As to the age of the baby, it is usually preferred that a baby be removed at an earlier age (than the 15 weeks in your baby's case) when the process of removal is much easier.

In summary, please learn Fertility and Awareness Control (you can send me an e mail requesting for it or just go to the blog and read it) and practice it. It will save you from unwanted pregnancy

Cheers