stopped bfing over a week ago and now have painful lump?

[hellosailor]

I stopped breast feeding about 10 days ago and it seemed to go okay, I was careful to reduce length of feeds gradually / pump so that I didn't get engorged / mastitis, especially as I'd had mastitis a couple of weeks earlier and didn't want to get it back through the process of stopping.

I thought everything had settled down, but one boob has felt increasingly sore since the day I stopped and seems to be getting worse, and now I can feel there is a lump about the size of a ten pence piece which is half under the nipple, half not, if you see what I mean.

Of course I will get this checked by a gp as soon as possible but I assume it's a blocked duct - does that seem likely? And what could I do about this to try and relieve the pain a bit tonight given that I can't feed as have given up feeding and I can't see that anything would come out now if I pumped - ten days after stopping - and in fact, by co-incidence, my pump broke at the same time I was giving up feeding so don't have a pump in the house anyway!

Can having a hot bath and massaging with flannels do anything if that's not a pre-cursor to actually letting milk out of your boob? i.e is it only possible to use that as a method if you still have an active supply or might it help anyway?

thanks for any advice about what I could do

[craigy]

Both times I gave up I got lumps and increasing pain around 7-10 days. Each time I just gently hand expressed to relieve the pressure and this did the trick each time.. To me it just seemed like the actual lactation had given up but this milk was just trapped there, it didn't stimulate any more milk and it all settled down afterwards...

[hellosailor]

thanks so much Craigy, that's good to know, will do the same and hopefully get it moving..

[Moos]

hellosailor, have had a very similar experience - craigy's advice is precisely what I did, took a couple of days of massaging the sore area to remove the excess milk but then it settled down.

[hellosailor]

just had a shower and did massage and already it's reducing, thanks Craigy and Moos!

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