Hello, Debbie.
    My computer was crashed for several days, and now I  have been working to 
catch up on many, many e-mails.  I worked through all  the Lactnet digests, 
and did not see any responses to your questions (I did not  want to duplicate 
suggestions), so here are my delayed thoughts:
    The firm purple bump sounds very much like a blood  blister.  When I was 
a child, I spent a lot of time on my grandparents'  farm.  One summer, one of 
the pigs had a huge blood blister in his  ear.  When the vet lanced it, it was 
quite a sight!  The vet explained  to me, when I asked why he needed to do 
that to the pig's ear, that there was  too much blood to reabsorb, and lancing 
the ear to allow the blood to come out  was the only way it could heal.  Now, 
your mom's blood blister is obviously  not that large, but perhaps even so, it 
might not heal without being  lanced.  
    Blood blisters are caused by trauma.  This  seems to be in keeping with 
your other comment that a fissure at the base of the  same nipple recurs every 
time this mother tries to go back to  breastfeeding.  It sounds to me like 
this baby is not nursing  correctly.  And maybe the blood blister is not healing 
because the baby  continues to traumatize the nipple every time he comes to 
breast.  This  would also be consistent with the report that the other nipple 
also becomes  purple with frequent breastfeeding.  Often babies do more damage 
on one  nipple than on the other.
    Perhaps one-on-one, rather than in the group  setting of the moms group, 
you can observe the feeding very closely to determine  if there is some 
unrecognized sucking issue happening here.
    Dee  

Dee Kassing,  BS, MLS, IBCLC, RLC
Collinsville, Illinois, in central  USA


             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html