One Step Forward, One Step Back...

First, the truly great news: LL nursed last night! I fed him his last bottle before bed, and as he was finishing, he entered that wonderful milk coma state where he's almost asleep and mainly limp and the cutest thing ever and amazingly pliant. So, I replaced the bottle with my breast, and waddya know, he latched on and nursed. Yay! And this morning, I presented him just with my breast, wide awake, with no lead-in bottle, and he did it again. Yay! (Only for a few minutes, and he was doing a lot of gentle biting during that time, and he only ate from one side, and then I had to give him a bottle for the rest of his meal, but still -- progress.) I'm not ready to declare total victory, but at least there's hope. We'll see how the next few days go. Yay!

Now, the somewhat related, totally crappy news. My right breast has been on and off bothering me for several weeks. Lots of pain, then it gets better, then it comes back.... I thought it was a plugged duct, and possibly some injury from LL biting it, and moist heat was helping a little bit, so I didn't pay much attention. (And his return to nursing last night and this morning was on the opposite side, because I didn't want him to bite the one that was already sore.) Then when I was pumping last night, there was suddenly a lot of blood. Like, a lot. Like, S almost fainted when he saw it.

It's a bit disturbing to think about, but blood in breast milk is actually common. Over the last six months, I've had those moments when I realized that the milk was tinted a little pink. Totally normal. Nothing to worry about. But this....... this was different. In color, in quantity, in quality, everything. And it happened again this morning. And when I called my doctor and described what was happening, expecting the "it's normal, don't worry about it" reaction that I usually get when I call, I instead got this reaction: "You need to be seen ASAP. We'll squeeze you in tomorrow morning."

So, um, now I'm panicking a bit. LL nursed last night, and I was floating on air for a few hours. It was tempered after I pumped last night. My mood was boosted again when he nursed again this morning. And now... now I just have this horrible tight feeling in my chest.

I'm sure it's nothing. It's probably just a delayed reaction to being bitten, hard, two weeks ago. Or the result of two weeks of non-stop pumping. Or a benign infection of some sort. But still... yikes.