**TMI warning** A Good Day gone bad: The clogged Milk duct story

It was such a great morning. I love seeing a nice down pour of rain, then sunshine for the rest of the day. Anthony spent the morning mostly doing fun things. We baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies, we turned some molding clay into foot impressions of the baby's foot, we worked on our phonics and math, we played Wii for hours!, we did laundry even.

Lliam was a little sleepy and did his thing. He's such a good baby. He's gained over 3 lbs since I brought him home. I know...mom calls me a jersey cow. I try to pump during the day with my hospital grade double pump, and I nurse at night. This is how I keep my appearantly large supply of milk up. So, theory says if you drain your milk fully, it refills itself automatically, and if you fail to drain it fully, you either get engorged, lose your milk, or get clogged milk ducts. Clogged milk ducts can also get infected if left untreated, and can cause you to get really sick with mastitis. Not fun.

I experienced a HUGE tennis ball-sized, painful lump in my right breast. What the heck? It felt like a constant let-down pain, and it was so hard to the touch. I did a little research, and found that my poor innocent milk duct was clogged !!! ME?!! My milk duct?!! How could it do this to me, when I felt that I did every measure to prevent this? ARGH. My wrists, and fingers, and arms were tired from massaging to get the milk to flow...and I tried all the "internet advice" for unclogging the milk duct. I had Jos come home from his important "making phone calls" time. I felt aweful about it, because he's been doing fantastic with his Financial Planning career with Canada Loyal. I felt it was a huge deterrant from his momentum. As guilty as I felt, I truly needed his help with this. I needed relief. I did NOT want to get this mastitis thingy. I needed someone else to take over with the massaging. Its not like I can call up a girlfriend and ask for their help on this...Debbi....Ok I'll pause for laughter....Still waiting cuz I know you are still revving up for a good inside joke with Cyn about this....alright. So Jos showed up, he's appearantly upset that I've called him home to massage my huge nasties.





By this point, I had been massaging for about 2 hours straight. After a new set of hands to work on it...I felt even more pain. His hands were obviously stronger, and hadn't been massaging for 2 hours already. It was truly painful. I went up for a hot shower, and that seemed to help quite a bit. You know what also helped? Prayer. I honestly asked for help for relief of my boob! I know. Sorta embarrassing to ask Heavenly Father for some boob help. Immediately after I finished my prayer, a milky-spray came out. Not for very long, but long enough to at least relieve some of the pressure. I went down stairs to have Jos work on it more...3 hours later. After all our hard work, I truly felt relief enough to go to bed. I changed nursing bras, and headed to bed. When I woke up 90% of the swelling had gone down and I feel that much better!!

There...you can have a TMI post about clogged milk ducts. Enjoy.