Our own Hoover…

This posting is probably not something the kids should read. And yes, I got approval from Victoria to post this.  Remember, this is for us to document our experiences and also to help educate other parents that might be going through similar things.

Over the past 3-4 weeks, Victoria has been experiencing some problems breastfeeding.  She has had two clogged milk ducts (one turned into an infection).  On Monday, we went to the doctor regarding her last clogged milk duct and that is when we found out it had become infected.  We had been doing everything they tell you to do — start on the “bad” breast, warm compresses, hot showers, pump afterwards to drain it.  Nothing seemed to work.  About a day and a half of taking the antibiotic, Victoria was doing much better.

Yesterday (Saturday), I watched Connor all day (Mommy was working on wedding pictures) and fed him 5 times with a bottle of expressed breast milk.  Victoria pumped during this period 4 times, so things “should have been ok”.  Saturday night she noticed the infected breast was once again hard as if the milk duct was clogged again (different location this time).  Hot shower, warm compresses and then pumping — still no improvement.  So, we started to worry again.

By now, it was 11:30pm and “sleepy head” had been sound asleep for 3 hours.  I suggested Victoria take a hot shower and I told her I would wake Connor because the breast pump didn’t seem to relieve the pressure.  So, I woke Mr. Hurricane, told him he had to help Mommy out, and then turned him over to Victoria.  15 minutes later, her breast had gone back to being soft and the “emergency” had been aleviated!

So, Mr. Hurricane is now Mr. Hoover (the vacuum) and Mommy is feeling much better.  We concluded that pumping for an entire day may not be a good idea (for Victoria).  The pump is working, it just does not seem to work on all of the milk ducts all of the time.  We realize that this is probably different for every woman, but we feel our solution is to breastfeed Connor most of the time and then mix in a bottle/pump session for Victoria.