Exemplar
Just when you think you have seen and heard it all...
Catherine Ward
Lecturer, School of Nursing, Curtin University of Technology, Perth WA
PP: 128
Abstract
As a midwife tutor I am often in the clinical area teaching student midwives and on one of these occasions I met Susan, a newly delivered mother. Susan wished to breast feed but she felt that there maybe difficulty due to a childhood injury. When aged four years, Susan had been severely burnt by fire down the right side of her chest and abdomen, the nipple on the right breast was completely obliterated. During adolescence the breast developed but was always smaller than the left, but not noticeably so, as when wearing a bra the difference was virtually undetectable.
When she became pregnant her doctor told her, as others had in the past, that she would never be able to breast feed from the right breast due to the absence of a nipple and that the milk ducts had been destroyed. Susan accepted this and did not give it another thought until she was four-month's pregnant when she noticed, to her and her husband's great surprise, she had developed a nipple on the right breast. This event was a huge surprise to everyone who knew of Susan's injury, including her doctor. The new nipple and areola tissue does not match the left side, but is smaller in size and paler in colour. The areola tissue is about 80 per cent developed-smaller in quantity and diameter-but the nipple itself is clearly definable. Leakage of colostrums occurred from both breasts and Susan hoped that the milk ducts were in enough quantity to allow her to breast feed from both sides.
Incidentally, the baby fixed and fed very well from both breasts and both mother and baby were both extremely content. This real life event made me realise that perhaps we can believe in the impossible. This remarkable story clearly emphasises the incredible growth, change and development that occur during this wonderful state of pregnancy.
Name of the mother has been changed to safeguard confidentially. Consent was gained from Susan to relate this story.
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