Weddingbee boards

Last night, I was feeling very engorged in one breast.  I nursed from that side first and then went to bed.  It was very painful and I started to feel a little feverish.  This happened once before and I pumped and that seemed to solve the problem.

In the middle of the night, I manually expressed some milk out while massaging where it hurt just to "lighten the load," and that seemed to help somewhat.  This time, I tried pumping but nothing really came out.  Then when I tried to express manually, there was a little bit of bright red blood coming from my nipple.  I'd read that this can happen.  I'm more alarmed that no milk came out than that there was a little bit of blood.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?  I no longer feel feverish but I'm definitely concerned.  Also, if my nipple has a small abrasion, should I wait until it heals to nurse my daughter from that side?

Many thanks.

if it is a clogged milk duct and not mastis, i would also recommend you try a heat pad on the breast.  it took me about a day to get it worked out. and I alternated between heat pad, some massage, baby, and what did it finally was my manual pump.  oh the relief once the "knot" worked out. 

Thanks, ladies.  Thankfully I have my 6-week postnatal follow-up appointment tomorrow.  I spoke with a nurse at the office today who advised me to pump often tonight and nurse exclusively from the "good" breast until I'm seen tomorrow.  I tried pumping again and got almost 5 oz. out of the "bad" breast tonight.  The milk seemed more watery than usual so I'll just continue until tomorrow.  I'm just glad that I was able to pump!

Thanks again.