Any ideas on the cause of this pain?

[marzipananimal]

I'm exclusively bf my 8 week old ds. After a very difficult first few weeks, things have been going pretty well since about week 5 - some soreness when latching on but generally ok.

Yesterday afternoon it suddenly became agonisingly painful to feed from the left. Latch looked fine but my nipple just hurt so much. I expressed a bit cos it was too painful to feed but only managed to get just over 1oz. Top half of boob was getting lumpy and hard. Did his night feeds using a nipple shield on the left which made it much less painful but he didn't seem to be emptying the breast well. This morning I noticed a small white patch on the tip of my nipple. It doesn't look like pictures I've seen of milk blisters, it looks like the actual nipple tissue is white.

I had a hot shower and massage, then fed him without nipple shield. Was agony for about half a minute then suddenly went back to normal. Breast nice and soft and floppy afterwards but the white patch is still there.

Any thoughts? Am terrified of getting mastitis as I've already had it twice so am really worried about it happening again and not being able to feed or express.

Thanks for reading this far!

You had a blocked duct. It happens. Next time try a hot flannel on the offending boob and then express or just feed from that breast (two paracetamol at least 20 minutes beforehand will help).

Don't worry, it doesn't mean you are going to get mastitis. You might want to try the rugby hold though if you do find you are prone to blockages, just for a few days, as this position is better at completely draining the breast :)

Signs to look out for with mastitis (as I'm sure you know) are redness, fever, feeling like you have the flu, pain etc.

lumpiness is gone but white patch is still there and each feed is really painful to begin with, hmm