A hard lump on the breast during lactation

Women should be very careful about lumps on their breasts, because lumps on the breasts are the most common symptom in the early stages of breast cancer. Breast cancer can be said to be a very serious disease for women, but some women who are breastfeeding find lumps on their breasts. This may be caused by other reasons, so why do lactating women have lumps on their breasts?

This situation may be milk accumulation, which often occurs in mothers with excessive milk and improper breastfeeding methods. Generally speaking, mothers tend to let their babies suck one breast first and then let them suck the other breast. Since most primiparas have a lot of breast milk and their babies are small, the baby is basically full after one breast is sucked empty, and sucking the other breast will not drain all the milk.

There is a lot of milk left in the breast, and it cannot be sucked out in time. When breastfeeding for the second time, she did not switch to the breast that did not completely suck out the milk from the previous time. If this is repeated several times, the milk in the breast that has not been completely sucked out will accumulate more and more, resulting in milk accumulation in the breast that has not been completely sucked out. In addition, nipple hypoplasia, nipples that are too small, and inverted nipples will hinder the baby from sucking milk, resulting in the inability to completely empty the milk and causing milk accumulation.

Performance

The initial symptoms of milk effusion are swelling and pain in the breast, and a hard lump and tenderness can be felt in the breast. The skin surface color may be normal or slightly reddish. Mothers often experience fever when they have milk accumulation. If the milk cannot be discharged in time during this period, it may develop into acute mastitis and finally turn into breast abscess.

treat

The treatment method for milk accumulation is mainly to try to drain the milk in the mammary gland, such as squeezing it with hands, sucking it out with a breast pump, and smelling it with Chinese medicine tooth soap powder, which has a good effect. The specific method is as follows:

1. Grind tooth soap (eyebrow soap or pig tooth soap) into fine powder. Use a layer of gauze to wrap the toothpaste powder into a small bag the size of a peanut, the same as the mother's nostril.

2. Dip the small medicine bag in 75% alcohol or white wine first, do not soak it. Just dip it in the alcohol and take it out immediately so that the outside of the medicine bag is wet and the inside is dry.

3. Dip the medicine bag in alcohol and put it into the nostril on the same side of the breast where milk is accumulated for 12 hours. Generally, if the milk accumulates within 1 to 2 days, the milk will be discharged after one plugging. If necessary, if the accumulated milk has not been completely drained and there are still lumps in the breast, you can insert it again after 8 to 12 hours. Usually this method is very effective for treating milk accumulation within 3 days and can almost always discharge the accumulated milk. The effect of milk accumulation after 3 days is a little worse, but it can also clear the mammary ducts in other parts of the body and prevent the scope of milk accumulation from expanding.

4. During the period of milk accumulation, if the mother has a fever, she can take 10g of ephedra decoction to reduce the fever. Generally, there is no need to use antibiotics or other anti-inflammatory drugs. If you can't find tooth soap powder at the moment, you can take the white part of scallion (the white part at the root of the small nostril, not the big nostril) and smell it. That is, take the white part of scallion and mash it. Wrap the white part of scallion with a layer of gauze like you wrap tooth soap powder, and plug it into the nostril on the side of milk accumulation for 12 hours, which can also achieve the effect of milk discharge.