Hello! FTM here with a 5 week old. Last week my dd did something amazing and started sleeping 6 hours at a time for two nights straight! Great news except for my poor breasts, especially the left one which developed a clogged duct. I noticed it Saturday morning with some tenderness. By the afternoon I was verrrrry tender, pink on the breast, and feeling flu-ish. I never had a fever but I did have chills and night sweats. I did all the things to help it (warm compress, frequent nursing, starting on affected side) and Sunday morning was already feeling a bit better. By Sunday evening I was much better so I never called my doctor for antibiotics since it was all resolving. Now on Monday night I have slight tenderness on that side, no chills, still some pink/redness on the breast with the swollen area. Still doing all of the things to do to help it resolve. And I am setting alarms through the night to pump.

I just pumped and noticed immediately that blood was coming out. It honestly isn’t that much. I made two ounces and it’s the color of strawberry ice cream. Not like the scary google image searches for blood in breastmilk. So I do have some nipple damage on that side and it HAD been worse recently since I had been using that side so often to resolve the clog. But since things had been resolving I was giving it more of a break and doing more pumping instead of letting dd go to town on it and my nipple didn’t hurt during pumping. It feels and looks like it’s all healing.

It just feels like a coincidence that I had this clog and then there’s blood for the first time. I guess my real question is: is this normal for a resolving clog? Or does this mean I’m not resolving like I thought I was and should call my doctor? I mean I really feel pretty good now and my symptoms are all going away. Blood is just a shocking thing to see and I don’t want to be ignoring any kind of sign that my body is trying to show me. Has this happened to anyone else?