help! what is happening?

[hildare]

To sum it up, pretty much, the milk is not coming out from a few ducts on one side of one breast, unless i press directly on the duct or squeeze the area specifically.
This has been happening with both the pump and when dd nurses.
On one side, it feels like my breast isn't being emptied all the way.. at first i thought it was due to dd not nursing well b/c of teething. However, it's happened today as well twice while pumping. I also got a normal amount of milk from the expression every time.
The side will hurt, not excruciatingly, and feel lumpy, even after a session. I can manually express, and the ducts will empty- it will literally spray out, and i can express the different ones, and feel & see them spray. This hasn't happened before, esp after pumping or nursing. It's beginning to hurt more and more and i am very worried i'm going to get an infection or something. I have only done the manual express/spray a few times but it seems to 'build up' until i do..
There's no redness, and I cannot tell that anything's clogged. What's happening?

[Eligracey]

Sounds exactly like a plugged duct to me. Probably it's only partially clogged, so some milk comes out when you press on it--this happened to me once. Just keep emptying it as much as possible. See kellymom for help:

http://www.kellymom.com/bf/concerns/mom/mastitis.html

[Hannah'sMommy]

Have you checked for a nipple bleb? It's on the surface and you can pull it out with sterilized tweezers or have the doctor help. I had that once when DD was really young. She nursed and it didn't go down, I tried pumping and it didn't go down. I just kept getting fuller and fuller on that side. So finally, I looked and there was a small black dot on my nipple (usually it's white though). I took some tweezers and pulled it out, it was a bit like a cork (basically probably dried milk that wasn't coming out). Then, I just started shooting out milk! So I pumped and got like 7-8 ounces from that side! What a relief!

[hildare]

It's somewhat better, but I'm still having problems, mostly later in the day, and it seems to be worse on the working-pumping days.
I had read about the plugged duct, but thought that since i could get the milk to come out by pressing that it might be something else!
i'll have to look for the white or black dots. do you guys know whether if it's either of those things, the milk can still come out another opening?
It's so weird.. it's like the milk is stuck in there unless I specifically press on the ducts.. then it sprays just like it hadn't been emptied at all. sigh.