Breastfeeding after excisional biopsy

[em's mum]

Hi guys! :wave:

I just wanted to ask a question to see if anyone else may have been through this and is able to give me some advice. :fingerscrossed:

I have had breast surgery twice in the last 2 years to remove 2 separate lumps in one of my breasts. Both lumps turned out to be benign. :smiliedance: I asked my surgeon whether this may affect breastfeeding in the future as, now that my surgery is all over, we are TTC#2. His opinion was that "you won't know until you try". I guess my biggest fear is that I might get mastitis or something seeing some ducts may have been damaged during the surgery. I had problems breastfeeding DD1 as she was tongue tied, couldn't latch on properly. So I opted to formula feed as once I started expressing and bottle feeding, it seemed to be the only thing I did all day long. I have no problems formula feeding if I have to, although I really would like to breastfeed if I can. I guess my mindset at the moment is that if I'm more likely to develop mastitis because of the surgery, then I'd much rather formula feed from the start to totally avoid it.

Has anyone had surgery and successfully breastfed afterwards? Or did you try but have a lot a problems??

Thanks in advance for any advice/help anyone can give me.

[camcat]

I developed an abcess when ds was approx 3 /4 weeks old which I had surgically removed (this came from mastitis that the doc didn't treat properly:mad: ).

I had a huge hole in my boob for weeks while it healed and had to stop feeding while it finished healing (I had milk basically pouring out of it for a while till the duct healed up:o ), but I kept expressing a bit each day to keep my supply there in the hope of returning to feeding when I was healed. LC and docs were a bit ambivalent about whether I would be able to go back to feeding. Most thought I wouldn't be able to.

I'm pleased to say though that after (quite) a while I finally finished healing and after gradually increasing my supply of that breast returned to feeding (YAY:yelclap: ).

I haven't had any trouble since re-starting and I have a fair amount of scar tissue there seeing as the hole was approx 6 cm deep and 1.5 cm diameter. I haven't had blockages, pain, another bout of mastitis or any trouble really since i got started again and my milk supply has been same as other breast. Hope that helps a little:D