Coming into this thread late: I had surgery on my breast when I had a 4 month old nursing baby. Milk stasis due to plugged duct, but doc and surgeon thought it was a tumor. (Nursed my niece for 3 days while my SIL was in the hospital with PP hemorrhage. Then she came home. Babies were 10 days apart in age. I developed a chicken egg on outer aspect of R.breast.)

They placed a drain tube pointing away from my nipple and I followed instructions to keep it clean and to soak up leaking milk. Others have speculated that the leaking milk also helped keep it free of infection.
Baby kept on nursing - no problem.

"Hah, hah, we had more trouble with leaking milk than we did with blood, hah, hah." I failed to see the humor in that.

Knowing what I know now, I would ask the surgeon to make the incision radially, or perpendicularly to the edge of the areola, instead of circumferally (is that a word?) meaning in an arc parallel to the edge of the areola, giving consideration to the structures that they may be severing underneath the skin. Mine was relatively shallow - no milk stasis above the incision after the next baby, but if it were deeper, there may well have been a problem with that section.
Hope this helps.
Phyllis

---- [log in to unmask] wrote: 
> Kim, you are correct this mom's breast will not be completely weaned in 4  
> days.  
> I am not an expert on this subject but I have read and heard lectures and  
> what I heard is a better approach is to allow drainage from the lumpectomy  
> site.  Even with milk coming from the wound it will eventually heal.   If they try 
> and suture it up she runs the risk of a milk fistula.  
> You may ask permission from the mother to discuss this with the  surgeon.  
> Contact Susan Love's web site and see if they can help you with this.
> Good luck to this mom.
> Ann Perry, RN IBCLC
> Boston, MA
> 
> 
 
--
Phyllis Adamson, IBCLC, RLC
Glendale, AZ.
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