Diet and Health FAQ

Tagged As: Pregnant Questions

Question:
Does anyone have any experience with this? What is causing it and what can I do about it? Is my milk coming in already at 17 weeks? If is is coming in, will it dry up and ruin my chance to breastfeed my baby when its born? And what can be done about the excruciating pain? Is it part of my breasts getting larger, or something worse? I also have quite a bit of abdominal pains, enough that it greatly affects my day to day activities. The doctors don't seem to be at all concerned, but I've never heard of a prenant woman having so much pain at this stage in pregnancy. I know I don't have anything to compare this pain to, and maybe I'm a wimp and its just stretching pain. I just don't know, but I want to find out. I am having a difficult time getting any good answers from any of the doctors I've talked to and I don't want to let these problems to continue. What should I do?

Answer:
Gosh, that doesn't sound like anything to worry about to me! Some people leak colostrum from early on- others never leak at all. It doesn't have any effect on your breastfeeding (you're not going to use up your milk early). I think instead of not normal yo0u could say it's unusully early. No worries :-). The pain could be ligament pain, could be gas, could be a lot of things. If you're worried about it, keep asking untilk you're satisfied with the answer you get. It is early at 17 weeks to be leaking that much colostrum, but it's within the realm of normal, certainly. The way it works is that the colostrum is produced until shortly after the baby is born and the placenta is expelled, at which time your body shifts over to making milk over the course of a few days. The amount of colostrum you produce doesn't usually have much (if anything) to do with the amount of milk you make later, so don't worry about that! If the leaking is bothering you, use breast pads to contain it. I liked the Johnson's Healthflow ones. This sounds like round ligament pain to me. It does hurt a lot! I was surprised at how much it hurt. But again, it's pretty normal. Try not to worry too much, but if it continues to really affect you, insist that your doctors take you seriously and make sure that nothing is wrong. I can't speak to the issue of colostrum, because I don't have any experience with that. As for the abdominal pain, that was pretty steady for me, from the first few months of menstrual cramp-like pain, through to that excruciating stabbing pain when I moved suddenly -- is that what you are feeling? If so, as scary as it is (and it really scared me), it's NORMAL. Just change position a little more slowly. As you get farther along, you may experience what I am currently experiencing - kind of an intense crampy constipation-like pain, that my OB says is round ligament pain. What you do for that (per my OB) is drink a pint of water and lay down for about half an hour on the side that the pain is on. Works amazingly well.