I was Producing breastmilk even though I was not pregnant- Actress, Abimbola Craig

Nigerian actress Abimbola Craig has opened up about a medical condition she faced that caused her to produce breast milk despite not being pregnant.

She said:  I had just taken a shower and I was lying down on my bed and I noticed that my top was wet by my left breast and I was like what’s going on? So I went and changed and I was like maybe I didn’t dry myself well. And then maybe like 2 hours after, I wake up again and it was wet. And I smell it and it smelt like fermented, I can’t explain it. So I was like hmm. So, I sit down on the bed and I remember pressing my breast and I saw milk and I was like this is crazy.

So instantly, thing like that happens to you: Google. Google said brain tumor, it said lump in your breast. And when I was much younger in secondary school, I’d had a lump taken out from my breast but it was benign so I assumed okay maybe this was a regrowth. So I didn’t think anything of it. Google also said hormonal stress, hormonal imbalance, so I’m thinking to myself: let me give it time, maybe this too will pass. 3 months and it hadn’t passed. Eventually, it even shifted to the right breast and I was like no, this is not normal. Because I knew first off, I wasn’t pregnant. And so I was like this is crazy.

So I sat my mom down and I’m like Mommy, this is what’s going on with me. She’s like why didn’t you tell me what’s going on, I was like I don’t know. So we go to see a doctor in a female Hospital in Nigeria here and typical them, you know, I was huge then, and so we sit down and he’s like “oh yeah first of all it’s your weight, if you lose a bit of weight, you know your hormones will balance out.” And I was like okay, cool.

Then I told my mom, that’s why I didn’t want to go, because they always say is always weight. First, everything in Nigeria, always your weight first. And so she’s like okay you know when we’re going for your brother’s wedding, we’ll do a checkup and so we get to America and we go to North Side Hospital and they’re like okay do an MRI and do a mammogram.

The results come out and the mammogram was fine and then the MRI showed that I had a tumor resting on my pituitary gland. Now, your pituitary gland is what sends signals to your body and makes your body produce milk.

The tumor was resting on my pituitary gland hence why it sent signal into my body that I was pregnant and my body was producing milk. And so I was given two choices: either to take drugs for the rest of my life to reduce the tumor, or to have surgery