Bettina, You wrote: <Through the pregnancy she has developed about 12 milk blisters (or so they appear) that are not painful and are clustered on each of her nipples. After a hot shower she can pick them off, but they recur. She has no breast tenderness or lumpiness and has not noticed leaking. When she tried to hand express they came out a bit and probably could have been plucked off like little plugs. Anyone seen this?> Have you yourself inspected the nipples, or is this choice of words the mother's description? I have pictures of a mom who by 28 weeks gestation, when we did a routine nipple assessment, had a buildup of little, somewhat shiny mounds of keratin just on the face of the nipple in a circle area about 3/8 " in diameter. She had not "picked" them off per se. But to avoid any adverse reactions on the part of hospital personnel when it was time to put the baby to breast, we had her soak them at bath time and remove some of the waterlogged material with a q-tip for microscopic identification by a pathologist. We had her gently towel the nipples just as she would her back or other body area, and put a lanolin preparation on after each bath, and within a month, they were all cleared away. Some references say that the nipple pores before delivery are occluded with a mixture of sloughed off epithelial cells and dried colostrum, which eventually gets moistened and goes into baby as part of early feedings. I would recommend that whatever the nature of this, that she be discouraged from picking them off for fear of damaging the skin barrier and risking introduction of germs capable of producing mastitis. I have seen mastitis occur during pregnancy. Jean ********************************************** K. Jean Cotterman RNC, IBCLC Dayton, Ohio USA ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html