Breastfeeding effects on your breasts

[sabby1]

Hi ladies, I have what feels like a super selfish question, but I'm wondering is there a difference between breasts that have breastfed a baby vs ones that have been through a pregnancy and didn't breastfeed?

I am a FTM and I have decided to go down the breastfeeding route (if I'm able) however I feel a bit scared having seen many like meme type things on pregnancy pages going on about how saggy and awful your breasts go after breastfeeding.

I am just scared that I am going to lose my breasts (which aren't anything fantastic to begin with) but I've been feeling super low about the way I look lately and am struggling with throwing saggy breasts into the mix aswell.

Is this the case with any breasts that have been through a pregnancy or does breastfeeding make them a lot worse?

I feel bad even asking this but I'm genuinely curious. I plan to breastfeed my baby either way I'm just kinda want to know what to expect and I feel I can't ask the doc cos it's so embarrassing and self absorbed of me. I'd like to hear some first hand experience ❤️

Also , I would love to hear from anybody who breastfed and didn't notice any negative changes to their breasts once they stopped?

Some things I've read have basically said that pregnancy does the damage anyway so it's hard to know !

I bf 3 babies in total between the ages of 32 and 42. My breasts are still pretty perky and I'm 51 now. I don't need to wear a bra if I don't want to. It might be genetics as my mum did the same with no adverse effects to her breasts.

But of course there is no way to know how they'd be now if I hadn't bf for all those years.

It's pregnancy itself as much as breastfeeding that can affect your breasts. But not everyone is affected. Just luck. A bit like stretch marks.

Mine are exactly the same after. I’m a b cup-they got huuuge but were back to normal about six months after starting feeding I think.

It's the pregnancy rather than the breastfeeding I'm afraid.
That and genetics, how much weight you gain etc. Your body lays down and develops the glandular tissue while you're pregnant, and the milk production is started by the hormones after the placenta is delivered, even supposing the baby never takes a sip.

There are women who feed for years and have much the same boobs afterwards, and women who never feed who feel like they're wrecked.

I did find it changed my view of my breasts: I disliked them all my life, but didn't care so much how they looked afterwards, because they'd fed my babies really well, and were therefore great boobs, regardless of what thy looked like.

I breastfed for 5 years in total, snd they still looking pretty good. Mine didn't change in pregnancy though I believe that is key.

Here you go, OP. Good for a laugh if nothing else. Point 2 answers your question.

I breastfed my son for two and a half years. I noticed no negative changes, but they are slightly larger than they were before I was pregnant.

It wasnt the breast feeding for me, i only expressed 3-4 weeks with both. With the extra weight and the fact my milk comes in so quickly, i get engorged instantly, i was a C as best with being over weight, i shoot up to a G at least when my milks in. Ive lost the weight etc and im an A now. No they did not fair well but thats not from breast feeding, the same wouldn't of happened even if i hadn't expressed. So its not always BF that is the cause.

I hated the changes to my boobs when pregnant/breastfeeding (think bigger boobs, huge nipples and veins everywhere!) but 2.5 months after stopping feeding and they are pretty much back to what they were pre-pregnancy.

As others have said it really depends on how your body reacts rather than feeding/not feeding, but this is mostly genetic luck of the draw and not much you can do to influence it!

It's mostly genetic just like stretch marks.

I've 34E breasts, breastfed for a total of 2 years across two children, breasts are just as full and almost as perky as pre pregnancy*

• although things are starting to slip now due to age and weight. But that's nothing to do with breastfeeding it's just the lifecycle of being a woman.

YY to breast changes just being part of the life cycle of a woman. I remember my childfree friend feeling very betrayed by the universe because her breasts started sagging in her mid 30s and she had thought that would only happen if she had kids.

Mine sit about 2 inches lower than pre kids (3 breastfed babies here) but I'm also a decade older now so probably would have happened anyway!

Best of luck with your baby and breastfeeding - I know it is very different for everybody but it was a wonderful experience for me, I hope it is for you too

All my friends that breast fed (and me) have all ended up with better boobs than those that didn’t.

I’ve put this down to a gradual deflate rather than rapid but don’t know if that’s actually true.

I think it depends on your comntctkve tissue
Genetics and how much weight or fluid you gain or loose with pregnancy and other things like do you wear supportive bras and do you do a lot of high impact training (all this affects ligaments and x
Size and perkiness IMO !!

That said I have managed to feed x3 babies and my boobs have returned to a happy perky normal
I have gone from b cup
To d/ dd and back. I have a few stretch marks but they are on my underside of boob and hips.
I did massage oils and lotions all during pregnancy and after to help with skin condition not sure it helped but jt felt nice !

I breastfed from one breast as I couldn't on the other side (at all). Both looked the same before breastfeeding. Now (3 years after second child) the one I fed with is one cup size larger and hangs lower.

I breastfed my first for 13 months and the 2nd for 14 months. When I stopped breastfeeding at first my boobs felt a bit empty but after about three months they are pretty much back to normal. I think it's the pregnancy that affects your boobs and personally I think the more weight you gain during pregnancy also has an effect on the look of your boobs post.

I breastfed - I am pretty sure this far on they are exactly what they would have looked like given my age had I not. A woman I know specifically chose not to breastfeed because she was worried how her breasts would look afterwards. Every woman's choice.

I thought it was pregnancy that affected them more?
I breastfed both of my dc until they were 2, I'm 49 now and they are a pretty damn good set of boobs still

I went back to work after 12 weeks and employed a nanny so only bf for a short time and only my first baby. To be honest it did effect my norks and altho they still look pretty damn fine they sort of changed shape somehow. My sisters bf their kids until they were 2 ish and theirs are OK although they could never fill a T/shirt quite as good as me, so perhaps genetics has a lot to do with it as I do know friends it did affect and they had plastic surgery to correct it.

I breastfed ds for nearly 4 years. My breasts did change whilst feeding - big, bigger, wonky, smaller etc. but they look pretty much the same now as they did before ds, and I have no stretch marks at all.

My boobs got bigger in pregnancy but didn’t change that much. However after nearly four months of breastfeeding they are clearly much less perky. I didn’t gain loads of pregnancy weight either as I weighed less two weeks post partum than when I conceived.
Tbh I feel like my boobs were on a downward trajectory from my mid twenties when I gained then lost some weight and they stopped being so perky. My mum breathed too and has saggy breasts afterwards so it might be in my genes.
DH agrees that after feeding our last child I can use family money for surgery if it bothers me.

My friends and I were only discussing this the other night, one of us is a GP with a focus on women's health/pregnancy. She said there's been many studies on this and any effects are caused by pregnancy not breastfeeding, as they observed changes in breasts of ff, ebf and combi feeding mothered, and found that there was no significant difference in long term changes that between the groups, therefore concluding it must be pregnancy that causes the changes.

Obviously there are always exceptions to this! X

@Crikeycroc - Oh I know this was a typo but it did make me laugh "My mum breathed too and has saggy breasts afterwards so it might be in my genes."

That pesky breathing eh ? Ah - Thank you

Mine are exactly the same.
There’s also the reduction of risk of breast cancer you get from breastfeeding to consider.