>Today the mother said she noticed "mucous" in the milk when she
>pumped.  She is very firm that this is mucous, clear, "just like comes out
>of your nose".  She said she had about an ounce of mucous in the milk.  She
>says that she has no breast pain, no fever, no red areas on her breast, no
>places that are firmer than others, she did state that the underside of one
>breast is a little warmer than the rest.

Apparently dairy labs are *very* familiar with this as a sign of mastitis in
cows; Staph aureus has a coagulating effect.

I've seen it twice - once in a woman who was pumping with an inexpensive
"flexible" (nipple/areola-flattening) flange pump.  Each time she took the
pump off her breast, it came away with mucus on her nipple, just like you'd
see in, well, when those Things hatch in the latest Lord of the Rings movie.
The pump also hurt, so I switched her to a better pump and she never saw the
mucus again.  Looking back, I suppose she narrowly averted full-blown
mastitis from repeated breast trauma combined with nipple cracks.

The other time was a woman who pumped great globs of goo each time,
especially from one breast.  The goo would break down after it had sat for a
while.  Freshly-pumped milk wouldn't even fit through a bottle teat pore;
milk that had stood a while was glob-free, and she used the milk without any
effect on the baby.  She had no other typical signs of mastitis, but
ultimately weaned completely from that breast.

Interestingly, she had the same thing happen with her second child.  This
time, we worked more creatively to find an answer.  We ended up checking
with a dairy mastitis lab, which is how we learned about the Staph aureus
coagulating connection.  She turned out to have several other bacterial
infections going, and was goo-free after a couple combined antibiotics.  In
retrospect, we wondered if she could have continued to harbor an infection
from her first child several years earlier.  If only we had checked with the
cow people earlier!
--
Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY
www.wiessinger.baka.com

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