My Son Said My Breast Was ‘Broken’ While Nursing. I Soon Found Out Why
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10 Loading video... By Alyce Collins and Julia Sinnott 0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. "Put your own oxygen mask on before helping others."
We’re all familiar with the phrase, and it’s a motto that us mothers are urged to remember, regardless of whether we are traveling or not.
But as I’m sure any parent will attest to, family life is hectic and unpredictable. I’m a mom with four children under the age of 10, so finding time to prioritize myself was impossible.
I grew up in Massachusetts and it’s where I met my husband. We moved to Tokyo for a few years with our two oldest kids, Rose, 10, and Grace, 8, while our third, Liam, 4, was born there. After a while, we moved to upstate New York for my husband’s job, and that’s where our youngest, Jack, 2, was born.
As wonderful as it was to enjoy so many different experiences, by 2025, I needed to come back home. We were lucky enough to find jobs and moved back to Concord, right down the street from my parents and one of my sisters.
I was working at Harvard, my husband loved his new job, and our kids were going to the same daycare that I went to many years ago. It felt like everything was finally coming together. Don’t get me wrong, life was incredibly busy what with the move, new jobs and four young children, so we were kind of in survival mode.
Life just took over and, as a result, I forgot about my health.
Before we moved back to Concord in August 2025, I remember feeling this lump in my right breast at our old house. I was still breastfeeding my son at the time, and I reminded myself that boobs change so much during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
The lump was maybe the size of a marble, but as I was nursing and my breasts were also larger, it was hard to tell if the lump itself was changing.*
But it turns out, I wasn’t the only one who noticed it.
I remember thinking how weird it was that the boys disliked feeding from that breast, but there were no alarm bells. By the time I found the lump, I thought I should probably get it checked, but that I would wait to see if it was still there when I finished breastfeeding.
When I was breastfeeding my sons, they did not like nursing from the right side at all. Liam would refuse that breast, unfortunately for me, making them comically uneven. With Jack, he would say over and over again that "it’s broken, the boob is broken." But milk was still coming out, so I didn’t understand the problem.
When I eventually weaned Jack off earlier this year, my breasts got much smaller and I suddenly realized that not only was the lump still there, but it was also bigger than I previously believed. We were in New York when I initially found the lump, but by now it felt more like a grape. As I started paying more attention, I also noticed that the tissue around the lump felt different.
Looking back, there were indeed several signs that I convinced myself were normal. For one thing, I lost all color in my complexion several months prior. I look very pale in all the photos, but I just attributed it to having a baby. Not to mention, I also felt tired constantly and had trouble getting out of bed in the morning.
Although, name me a mother-of-four who doesn’t feel exhausted.
I also noticed that there were more hairs growing around my right nipple. It went from two or three hairs to almost 10 hairs. There was also the dreaded smell. I breastfed all my children and always felt like I needed to shower during those periods (luckily no one else seemed to notice).
But when I weaned Jack off breast milk, the smell didn’t go away. It was a strong body odor, with a kind of rotten fruit smell underneath. It really lingered, even when I scrubbed in the shower, and it specifically came from my right armpit.
I couldn’t ignore the signs any longer, so after dismissing the lump for months, I finally scheduled an appointment.
I had to get a referral for a breast center, so I went to an OBGYN and she said the lump felt like a cyst, but referred me for imaging, nonetheless.
I had to wait about a month before I finally got a scan, but the crazy part is, the lump didn’t even show up on the mammogram. As there was clearly a lump that could be detected by touch, I was sent directly for an ultrasound scan.
The lump could in fact be seen on the ultrasound, so the doctor recommended getting a biopsy next. I went in on June 29, and as soon as the surgeon felt the lump, she said, "I don’t really like the feeling of this."
I spent so many months telling myself it was nothing, but now I could not hide my fear.
Days passed but I had this horrible gut feeling the entire time. I kept checking my online portal for updates, then on July 14, it finally came.
Invasive ductal carcinoma, the most common breast cancer .
I didn't cry when I saw those words; it was like an out-of-body experience.
A few different hospitals looked at the pathology and showed that it was grade two and grade three. Curiously, when I went for an MRI, my entire right breast lit up on the monitor, and so did the lymph nodes. It showed the tumor and many other masses adding up to about 10 centimeters of cancer .
By this point, the tumor was the size of a softball and was growing so fast that it had become necrotic (that explains the smell I guess). In retrospect, knowing that the mammogram did not pick up anything, and the ultrasound only caught about 25 percent of what was going on, was somewhat alarming.
It was deemed that a double mastectomy was the best course of action, so surgery was scheduled for August 11. Everything happened so quickly—I went from seeing my OBGYN on May 29, to a diagnosis in mid-July, to surgery in August.
The first two weeks after surgery were tough, but my mom and sister took great care of me. Now, I’m feeling great and was even able to do some light workouts prior to starting treatment.
After…
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