Help! Sudden onset of engorgement, one side, very tender

[@llli*ellewyo]

Hello ladies, I've been breast-feeding LO 8 weeks and suddenly last night my left breast (the high producer of the two - lefty is bigger and is typically expressing about 30-40% more milk than the right, I pump about once a day to keep baby boy in practice with the bottle before I go back to work April 1). Anyway, left breast suddenly engorged last night. While I was reading in bed I noticed around 10 pm what felt like hard lumps inside my left breast, I compared with my right which had no such hard lumps. After a few hours I realized the lumps were probably milk ducts getting engorged. At midnight I fed LO, the swollen feeling didn't really go down (hard to get him to drain while he's half asleep) so I went to pump. Not much came out and I took 600 mg of advil and went to sleep, thinking that might help with the swelling because my breast was now very tender (I massaged maybe too much while pumping?). It's now nearly 5 am, I just gave babe another light feed (he fell asleep again). Right breast is fine, left breast is quite tender/swollen. I tried to pump for about five minutes but not much came out / not really a let down. When I NORMALLY pump on this side it's usually quite the gusher just letting down and then spraying milk for about 8 minutes. When full I can get nearly 3 ounces out on the left side (around above 2 ounces on the right, usually somewhere around 2.5 and 1.5 ounces total for a full pump however). I'm not sure what to do, I have a cool compress on it now, but will the swelling go down/tenderness go down? Any thoughts as to how engorgement suddenly set on like this?! We've had a good BF relationship until now! (Minus a case of thrush early on, at 12 days). Please help! It hurts!

[@llli*mommal]

Welcome to the forum!

What you describe sounds like plugged ducts rather than engorgement, since you're having so much trouble emptying that breast. This is a really good link on plugs: http://kellymom.com/bf/concerns/mother/mastitis/. Make sure you go over the treatment suggestions carefully, and also the symptoms of mastitis, which can follow plugged ducts.

[@llli*ellewyo]

Thank you! It turned out the my clogged ducts turned quickly to mastitis, fever, redness, chills. I went straight to the doc yesterday and got on antibiotics. I feel a lot better today (plus about 12 hours of sleep, on and off with the babe), but the redness is still there and the lumps seem to be going away / coming back / going away. Is this normal in the process of healing?

[@llli*maddieb]

It's important to remember that mastitis and plugged ducts are different things although of course they often occur together. The antibiotics treat the mastitis-The infection that is causing the fever and chills. They will not clear the plugs. don't know what all you have tried for addressing the plugs, if you go to the search engine on this site put in the word toolkit the first thing that comes up is the 'tearsheet toolkit.' Look at the PDF titled dealing with plugs and blebs. Www.Kellymom.com also has excellent information on plugs and mastitis.
Very important to frequently remove milk from the breasts. Baby should be nursing very very frequently, if you cannot get baby to nurse frequently enough you can try hand expression or pumping as needed.