This Woman's Clogged Milk Duct Story On TikTok Is Raising Awareness For New Moms

Clogged milk duct TikTok: Motherhood isn't easy. It takes an emotional, physical, mental and often painful toll on the mother's body, right from when her body prepares to receive a foetus to when a baby is delivered. Just how much do birthgivers and their caregivers experience with pregnancy? Are they always prepared to deal with it all? Is science acknowledging the complications?

A woman on TikTok, sharing her own brush with a scary breastfeeding episode, is drawing attention to one of the lesser-known aspects of new motherhood: clogged milk ducts.

In April last year, not long after the birth of her daughter, TikTok user Tyler-Marie Oates reportedly began developing symptoms resembling the flu, complete with high fever and chills. Suspicion should have shifted to mastitis, a breast infection that involves an inflammation of the mammary gland.

However, as told to Buzzfeed, since she was in the early stages of the condition, signs of breast inflammation hadn't yet appeared. Doctors ran a few tests but everything came back negative, including her COVID-19 test. No one thought mastitis.

Clogged Milk Duct TikTok Is Viral: Here's What Happened To This New Mom

She was kept under examination and overnight, she "began to get worse." 

"When I would pump, hardly anything would come out, and if it did, it was blood," she told the publication. "There was a crazy amount of pressure, it almost felt as if my boob was going to explode." The mastitis had moved to sepsis, a serious response to the infection. She was placed under postpartum care nurses who helped her in pumping out the breast clots. 

Oates explained that the clots came out of her nipple by being squeezed out - a painful process. "When the clots would come out, they would be a little thicker than a shoelace string while exiting and in the bottle would form together to make the slime-like ball in the video," she said. 

Oates shared a video of one of her clots, which has now gone viral on TikTok with over nine million views. 

"In case your significant other doesn't believe you that a clogged duct hurts, show them this," she wrote alongside.

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