Fair warning: this is a gross story about breastfeeding woes.
Saturday afternoon I switched the Z from the left boob (The Slacker) to right boob (The Overachiever). She popped off really fast, and I saw bright red blood in my shield, and no milk. "Weird", I thought to myself, "I haven't seen blood like that in a long time - perhaps I scratched myself when I switched her??" I kept feeding her, knowing from my early breastfeeding experience that blood will do her no harm, gross as it sounds. She popped off again, again I saw blood. Again, and this time there was a little milk with the blood. But she was DONE. She wasn't having anything else to do with it.
The next time I fed her, she didn't want The Overachiever. Sucked like once and patently rejected it. I thought maybe she didn't want to lay on that side (she is recovering from an ear infection, I thought maybe the positioning was hurting her).
The next time I fed her was bedtime. She rejected The Overachiever again. It was really frustrating by this point. We flipped her around and tried football hold in case I was right about the ear thing. NO! She wanted NOTHING to do with my right boob. She had already emptied the left, so we warmed a bottle and she fell asleep that way.
I went to bed a little worried about her self-weaning or something, and set the alarm for a 3:30am pumping session since I was going to be full due to her lack of nursing.
3:30am: I wake up, follow my normal procedures, start pumping, and look down and see blood squirting out INSTEAD of milk. Woke Preston up, almost passed out (I don't do well with my own blood or that of people I love). He proceeded to do research on the internet while I called the after-hours nurse line at my doctor's office. I kept pumping and eventually I started getting a mix of blood and milk, and finally near the very end, just milk.
It was DISGUSTING.
The nurse said not to panic but to call the doctor first thing Monday morning. To quit electric pumping on that boob (wasn't going to happen, but I was careful for the rest of the day to have the suction as low as possible), and just feed the baby from the good boob/bottle until I saw improvement. Fortunately, that panic-making 3:30am session was the last time I saw blood. I actually cried the next time I was ready to turn on the pump, but milk came out, thank goodness!! And for the rest of the day, only milk. And I only pumped 3 times total that day. I felt comfortable enough that I offered The Exsanguinator to her that evening and she took it, so I'm pretty sure there wasn't any blood.
Update: Now I'm panicking again. I called my OB this morning, and she referred me to GENERAL SURGERY. NOT COOL. Not cool at all. They took all my information down and will call me back tomorrow to let me know if they want to see me.
2 comments:
Please don't panic. There are many things this could be, and MOST of them are benign. Some are best fixed by surgery, others by less invasive techniques. The general surgeons are the ones who handle breast problems (including benign ones). The surgeon will probably send you to get some imaging (mammogram, ultrasound) and that will give you a much clearer idea of what is causing it.
Best of luck to you! (from a lurker with two small children and a medical degree).
Thank you, Robyn!
Google told me that most of the possibilities are benign, but it is so much better to hear from someone with a medical degree. :-) I'm trying not to panic - I think overnight it has transitioned to a sense of general unease. I don't deal with limbo well... I think I'll be better after they call me today, no matter what they say.
And, I have a lurker, wow, how cool! (I'm usually the lurker, lol!)
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