Ever heard of Rusty Pipes

Well I hadn’t either, until it happened to me. I was having a little trouble with breast feeding so the nurse was helping me get my little man to attach correctly when she said “that is not normal hold on a minute”. She squeezed my breast to double check what she thought she saw and blood looking fluid came out instead of the yellowish color colostrum. She started asking me if I had any injuries recently when I said “no” she said something about a tumor. I admittedly thought cancer! She told me to not breast feed my newborn and told me to pump to see if we could get all the blood color fluid out and my milk in. No one had any idea what is was, not even the lactation specialist that was there at the time. They also had me get an ultrasound of my breasts to see if I indeed had a tumor. I was so upset, thinking I had a cancer and not being able to breastfed my newborn. I was a strong believe in the benefits of breastfeeding and not being able to do that right away really hurt me, I also did not get to bond with my baby that first day because I was being rushed around getting ultrasounds and getting my hospital pump all set up, it was a very stressful and disappointing first day of motherhood. I didn’t find out anything until the next day. A different lactation specialist came in with an article on rusty pipe syndrome. She said she knew what it was as soon as they told her, where was she yesterday and why didn’t they call her? She said it was no big deal and go ahead and breast fed again. I was so relieved. So here is what it is, rusty-pipe syndrome is a condition, seen mostly in first-time moms, where the milk appears to be rusty in color. It is more common with first pregnancies; Rusty pipe syndrome may result from vascular engorgement of the breast. As your milk-producing glands, or alveoli, go through a period of rapid development, and the blood flow increases to your breasts, there may be some internal bleeding, which ends up coming out instead of the colotrom. Once we found out that it was not a big deal, things were back to normal and I got to feed my newborn how I wanted.