A mom has recalled the moment her nipple "broke off" while she was breastfeeding her baby.
TikToker and mom Brooke (@brookesobasic) recently took to the social media platform to raise awareness of the rare condition, captioning her post: "My rare experience, I was clueless about the possibility."
In her post, Brooke explained that when she was 15 years old, she had just given birth to her first child and was breastfeeding with the help of her mom, sister, and a lactation counselor.
After believing that she had successfully latched her child, she then recalled: "I noticed, the latch was not so good. My nipple started to turn black at the base and white at the tip."
Check out the mom's rather graphic post below:"That's a signal for bad blood flow [...] that's a dead nipple and dead tissue," she adds. However, despite the discoloration, she continued to breastfeed her baby.
"I latched my baby boy on, he's nursing, and then he stops," Brooke says. "I'm looking down and he's kinda choking. My nipple broke off and he had it in his mouth. I started to panic. I started to freak out."
After retrieving her nipple, she says that she rinsed it in water and attached it back to her breast with a band-aid. She then called the advice nurse who told her: "If the nipple is still alive and has enough blood flow in it, that it can actually reattach itself."
And, amazingly, it worked. "My nipple's not perfect today, but it's still here," she says. (In a later video, Brooke revealed that a piece actually broke off a few days later while she was showering and went down the drain.)
Brooke says that the incident was the last day she ever breastfed that child, but that she has been able to nurse three other children since.
After amassing more than 1.6 million views, Brooke's comments section was understandable full of confused and concerned TikTokers.
"I did not know that could happen," one person wrote. "Now I’m terrified… I’ll continue to breastfeed but now that will be on my mind every now and then".
A second added: "I MADE THE MISTAKE OF IMAGE SEARCHING THIS".
And a third wrote: "New fear unlocked".
According to Pregnancy, Birth, and Baby, this condition is known as nipple vasospasm, and occurs when "the blood vessels supplying the nipple go into spasm and reduce the blood flow to the nipple".
As well as affecting milk flow, it can also result in intense pain.
It can occur as a result of "nipple trauma if the baby is not well attached to the breast" and/or "due to Raynaud’s phenomenon [...] this is when vasospasm occurs randomly and is unrelated to breastfeeds."
For part two of Brooke's story, watch below:
Anyway, that's me not sleeping tonight. Anybody else?
