A Missed Pump

"Cas. Cas wake up"

Cas woke up feeling a stabbing pain in her chest, well rather her breasts. She sat up and almost screamed. Her breasts were engorged. No, this was beyond engorged. Her breasts might actually explode. She looked around and saw it was seven o'clock in the morning. That means that JJ must've slept through the night. She had missed her middle of the night pump and feeding by six whole hours. The pain was unbearable and she was drenched in milk.

"Babe you missed your pump," Mo said as Cas realized he too had a significant wet spot on his shirt and well, the whole bed had a wet spot.

"I know" Cas said bitingly as she felt another sharp pain scythe through her overstuffed breasts. "Mo I don't know if the pump can handle this. Please help me get my shirt off."

Mo was very used to this part of Cas's condition. This was part of the dark side of Cas having severe hyperlactation syndrome. She would get so engorged that she would have her upper body range of motion limited due to the pain of moving and the sheer size of her breasts. Carrying upwards of six extra pounds of milk in her breasts also was doing a number on her back, especially given that she was quite busty to begin with. Then, there was the whole ball and chain of actually lactating and the fact that she burned over 4,000 calories a day just from lactating and would have to eat as such to not lose any more weight than she already had by that point. Add to that the ever present threat of clogs, infections, and mastitis and the grass is indeed not always greener on the other side.

Tears rolled down Cas's cheek as she clenched her jaw and lifted her arms while Mo gingerly lifted the drenched shirt she had on. Once it was off, Mo couldn't help but stare in shock at the sight before him. What were usually a fairly large pair of breasts were nothing short of gargantuan. A web of veins sat atop two boulders, each with a massive, dark brown nipple that had a steady stream of milk coming out of it. Once Mo snapped out of his shocked state, she went to work on Cas's left breast. The let down came quickly and forcefully, even by Cas's standards. Luckily for Mo, he had been working on his suckling technique and was now able to cope with Cas's let down, if only by the skin of his teeth.

The next 15 minutes were spent with Mo working on Cas's left breast and once that breast was somewhat relieved, he switched sides while Cas grabbed the pump to begin pumping off enough so that JJ could eat. In another 10 minutes, JJ began crying and Mo got off so he could retrieve the baby.

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Later that night, Mo and Cas were getting ready for bed and Cas had noticed that her total ounces were down for the day by about 40 ounces. Her breasts were still sore from being so insanely engorged that morning and she had been taking some tylenol under orders of her breast specialist to quell the pain and been looking out for any red spots that might indicate mastitis. She also had been pumping more as a precaution just to be safe and truth be told, she was feeling raw. She just new her body would take all this extra pumping as a sign to make even more milk and she didn't that. She loved lactating but this was too much. 300 ounces extra everyday meant that they had to put considerable sums of money into getting freezers, bottles, sterilizers, and other materials needed to pump. Not to mention their power bill was through the roof due to the amount of power needed to work it all. She was able to find mothers in need of donor milk but even when giving it away for free and completely replacing all forms of milk with her own, there was still too much.

She was even so touched out that she wouldn't even let Mo nurse like normal, opting to just pump and set 4 alarms for the middle of the night. While she was doing that, she went through her e-mail and noticed that there was an e-mail from her breast specialist entitled "Prospective Study". Seeing as she had nothing better to do she opened it.

"Dear Mrs. Ali,

There is a new clinical study that will be run on women with hyperlactation syndrome. It is being done by the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. If you elect to participate, all necessary expenses will be covered in addition to lost wages. You can also elect to bring your child(ren) with you. The study will be one month long and there will be extensive data collected on your milk, blood, brainwaves, and hormone levels to see if we can develop ways to remedy hyperlactation syndrome. Let me know if you are interested and I will provide you more information. However, you must let me know within three months time so we can prepare as the study begins in four months time.

Regards,

Dr. Chun-Hua Li"

Upon reading this, Cas called Mo over and asked him to take a look.

"Should I do it?" She asked.

"I don't know. A month is a while for us to be apart not to mention that there's the question of do you take JJ if you do go. We could sure do without the milk being in our freezers though I must say." he replied.

"So go?"

"I don't know. I want to say yes but there's other factors we have to consider. We should give it a week to come to a decision. But i wouldn't agree just yet. We should see what other information Dr, Li has."

"Sounds good"

"Hopefully this can lead to something good."