Diagnosing congenital abnormalities

Soon after the little man was born, we discovered a congenital abnormality….  Not in him, in ME!  We got home from the hospital and I noticed a swelling lump under my left armpit.  Worried it was cancer (!!) I went in to get it checked out.  It turns out it’s not cancer, it’s MILK.  And, even crazier, it LEAKS.  You read that right, I have milk leaking from a hole in my armpit.  (Specifically, from a hair follicle—I do not have a nipple or mole.)

Apparently auxiliary breast tissue in the armpit is relatively common.  An article in Kellymom suggest that 1-6% of women have extra nipples or breast tissue.  https://kellymom.com/bf/got-milk/extra-breast-tissue/  It’s caused from “incomplete regression of the mammary ridge (milk line) during the development of the embryo before birth.”  I have heard from other friends who had swelling under their armpits that was clearly extra breast tissue.

BUT, it’s pretty uncommon for that extra tissue to create milk, and rarer still that the milk can actually be expressed.  Here’s an article that talks about the “relatively uncommon condition” of axillary accessory breast with milk fistula: http://ispub.com/IJS/18/2/10314  The picture included is NSFW, but gives you an idea.  MILK.  LEAKING.  FROM ARMPIT.  Mine doesn’t leak spontaneously, but it can be expressed.  I leave it alone for as long as I can, but it swells to like the size of a marble and starts to hurt after a couple of days.  Then I massage it in the shower, the milk comes out, and the swelling goes down.  For posterity, I expressed it into a measuring container once to see how much was there.  It was about a teaspoon.  I did not feed it to the baby.

Weirdly, I did not have this with my first pregnancy.  No extra tissue, that I noticed, and definitely no milk leaking.

Anyway, other than that strange little thing, all is good here.  The little guy isn’t so little anymore—six months old!!  He is a happy, healthy, chubby little thing.  We started solid food recently, or tried anyway, but he HATES it.  He clamps his mouth tight and cries.  I’m not sure how we’re going to handle it.  Standby!