Product focus: Postnatal breast and perineal pain

Abstract

Painful breasts and perineum are a very common phenomenon in the early postnatal period. Both types will cause acute pain and may cause considerable distress and discomfort for many mothers. Assessing pain before offering advice on how best to alleviate the pain is an important issue. Midwives will, therefore, need to routinely assess the intensity and quality of the pain by asking mothers to self-report. It is generally accepted that acute pain is managed inadequately by the use of systemic analgesics alone. Localized pain relief, however, can assist to alleviate acute pain and hot and cold therapy throughout the centuries has been used effectively to achieve this. This product focus describes the benefits of two cooling devices (Mom's Breast Soother and the feme Pad) manufactured by Florri-Feme Pharmaceuticals Ltd, that will assist newly delivered mothers to achieve breast and perineal pain relief.