How women can minimize or even completely avoid saggy breasts from breastfeeding with proper dietary preparation and strategic weaning to prepare the skin for maximum elasticity and repair.
One of the saddest things I sometimes hear from women who are pregnant or plan to become pregnant is that they intend to bottlefeed because they’ve been warned that breastfeeding causes droopy, saggy breasts.
Even women who are in full support of breastfeeding seem to accept that the choice to feed their child with Mother Nature’s best will ultimately sacrifice the firmness of breast tissue.
Are saggy breasts post nursing really just part and parcel of the process?
While every woman is different and certainly in some instances, pregnancy and breastfeeding can cause undesirable changes to the appearance of the bosom despite Mom’s best efforts, there are definite strategies that greatly lessen the impact.
In some cases, there can be little to no difference in breast appearance after pregnancy and nursing.
It really is possible to birth and nurse several children with little change in the appearance of the bosom after weaning the youngest child.
Could Saggy Breasts Syndrome perhaps primarily be the result of the appalling diet of most nursing mothers?
Does the modern, accepted approach to weaning abruptly also play a huge role in the loss of breast integrity?
Let’s take a look!
Diet for Strong Breast Tissue
The most important thing a woman can do prior to nursing is to adequately prepare the breasts for the stress and strain of nursing with a diet that results in very strong, elastic skin.
Of critical note is to embrace a traditional diet that includes butter, cream, full fat yogurt and other animal fats to maximize elastic breast tissue.
This also means avoiding toxic vegetable oils from factory-produced, low cholesterol spreads, dressings, and other processed foods.
This ideal pregnancy and nursing diet provides suggestions for daily fat intake.
The reason healthy fats in the diet help avoid saggy breasts is that every cell in your body has a cellular membrane that is ideally composed of at least 50% saturated fat.
When the cell membranes of the skin and tissues are composed of the proper fats, they are strong, resilient, and highly elastic.
Healthy Fats = Healthy Skin
If you avoid saturated fats and starve your skin of what it needs, the cell membranes will be improperly formed with an oval instead of a perfectly round shape.
This increases the risk of irreparable damage from the stretching and straining of the skin and breast tissue from nursing.
Incidentally, plenty of saturated fats in the diet is also key to avoiding stretch marks on the breasts when the milk rapidly comes in a few days after baby is born.
Skin cell membranes comprised of 50%+ saturated fat will be elastic and resilient from this sudden strain!
The benefit is stronger breast tissue that can return to its original pre-pregnancy and pre-nursing shape with as little change as possible.
Another benefit is that the breasts are more resistant to mastitis.
Elusive Nutrients
Plenty of vitamin K2 in the diet is important for breast tissue integrity as well.
This largely ignored nutrient is in the superfood natto in large amounts. Japanese women who consume it daily enjoy superior skin elasticity and resistance to sagging and wrinkling.
Low Vitamin K2 in the diet is literally the vitamin deficiency that is written all over your face (and breasts).
Over 90% of people are estimated to be seriously deficient in this nutrient!
Grassfed butter, ghee, emu oil, goose liver pate, and pastured eggs are other excellent sources of this nutrient.
Another critical fat that healthy skin needs is arachidonic acid.
This fat is primarily found in egg yolks and butter.
Interestingly, women in traditional Chinese provinces like Chongqing are encouraged to eat up to 10 eggs per day along with plenty of chicken and (1)
Without a doubt, arachidonic acid (AA) is an underappreciated fat for maintaining healthy skin.
It works by ensuring the proper formation of junctures between skin cells.
Without enough arachidonic acid in the diet, skin cannot adequately maintain moisture and is more susceptible to damage.
When the gaps are larger than they need to be, the water between cells evaporates from missing tight cell-to-cell junctions. (2)
Ideal Weaning Age
In addition to diet, the weaning approach a woman employs significantly impacts the perkiness versus sagginess of her bosoms at the conclusion of breastfeeding.
The modern approach to weaning is for Mom to initiate the process and do so fairly suddenly once the child starts eating solid foods or she goes back to work.
Moms beware: Weaning around the 4-6 month mark contributes greatly to saggy breasts.
This is the very time when baby’s demands for breastmilk are the greatest (hence, nursing breasts are at their largest size).
Stopping abruptly at this point is not a good idea!
It can be a primary cause for excessively saggy breasts similar to what happens when an obese person loses weight rapidly after gastric bypass surgery.
Tapering After Baby is on Solids
The better way to wean is as gradually as possible, ideally somewhere between the 2-4 year mark.
While this may seem to be a long time by modern standards, extended breastfeeding has many long-term health benefits for baby. (3)
When weaning is very gradual, the the demand for nursing eases off slowly as baby’s appetite for solid food increases.
This gives the body plenty of time to slowly shrink and reabsorb the breast tissue.
Skin that stretched and expanded to accommodate large quantities of breastmilk when the child was an infant can gradually be reabsorbed.
This strategic weaning approach greatly minimizes or can even completely prevent issues with sagging.
Think of the difference between someone who loses weight at a rapid pace (such as after gastric bypass surgery) versus someone who loses weight slowly but surely with improvements in diet and exercise alone.
In the first scenario, large amounts of excess, sagging skin usually need to be removed by a second surgery a year or two down the track.
The second scenario presents far fewer problems with excess, sagging skin with surgery likely not needed at all.
Extended Breastfeeding is a Traditional Practice
Nursing a child until 2-4 years old mimics the practice of Traditional Societies. (4)
These cultures carefully spaced the birth of children to ensure the optimal health of each child as well as the provision of nutrient-dense breastmilk until the child was a young toddler.
Careful attention and thought to the diet well before pregnancy and during nursing combined with a slow approach to weaning can go a long way toward ensuring that your breasts provide not only optimal nutrition for your baby but also maintain their shape and perkiness afterward!
(1) Successful Breastfeeding and Alternatives
(2) Precious Yet Perilous
(3) Do You Think Breastfeeding a 3-Year-Old is Strange? In the Ancient World, It Saved Lives
(3) Fat and Energy Contents of Expressed Human Breast Milk in Prolonged Lactation
Regulating hormones might be helpful, too. Hormone changes during pregnancy are what allegedly cause the damage. Definitely already done to me long before I began breastfeeding. But I know I have skin issues anyways.
I weaned at the 6-8 month mark-so “my bad” on that one. I wonder if this can be corrected by “doing it right” in subsequent pregnancies? Any thoughts?
Mine aren’t saggy or deflated, granted I started out with perkier than average ones since I had had a reduction nearly 20 years prior. I don’t remember exactly what all I ate but I ate whatever I could, minus the long list of stuff that made my son thrash, buck, and spit up volumes. Weaning was baby lead, and happened at 20 months.
I eat/ate saturated fats from organic sources and weaned and will wean at 2 and I still have breasts that droop …… as much as I’d like to believe that these things will prevent it, I’m afraid it has not for me. But, just as grey hair and wrinkles are a part of life, so are droopy boobs, big deal.
I’m the same way. I eat right but I don’t have the breast shape I did before and I have the worst stretch marks I’ve ever seen. I have nothing against this article and eating properly, but from my experience, it’s not a black and white issue. Bad skin seems to run in my family. I had a friend pregnant at the same time as me; she ate all the wrong things and has skin like a rubberband and no stretch marks. Some of us are just blessed with learning to accept the changes in our bodies 🙂
Yes!! Me too. Great diet, lots of fat, rub coconut oil on my breasts, droopy as all get out.
And what about those pictures of traditional African women who have verrrry droopy breasts???
Hype is hype – There is no diet or breastfeeding technique including when the infant is weened that will prevent nature from doing what it do. Every body and breast is different and will respond differently. Breasts that are prone to drooping will droop no matter what – So too with vaginal stretching during birth and not returning to “form” after birth.
Motherhood is wrought with wonderful sacrifice. If your husband can’t appreciate all that you are and all that you do – then that is a topic for another thread (even if it is not about pleasing him).
Always and forever, your kids will appreciate your sacrifices – my mom is my hero – and being a twin I had to share the pair darn it 🙁
Not all kids will appreciate those sacrifice , I wish I never have to go through any of these thing
We can all help our daughters can’t we :))
Take that Jillian Michaels! although the 2-4 years seems kind of long.
The World Health Organization says that across the globe, the average weaning age is between 2 to 7 years. Breastfeeding for 2 years or more is fine and totally normal. In fact, breast milk changes to adapt to your child’s needs, no matter their age. It truly is amazing!
2-4 years isn’t long at all…it goes by very fast:(
2-7 yrs? LoL! I couldnt see my son coming home from 1st grade and his snack is sucking on my breast. No sweetie…no!
His friends would come over and are told to wait a couple of minutes before they can all go outside and play b/c he’s busy suckling. No way! Not normal.
Breastfeeding is normal that is why we have breasts hello??? But also their are baby bottles to feed your child if they are getting to old for the boob.
I wish I had known about all of this 5 babies ago. Thankfully, with my 1 year old, we’ve had a diet full of saturated fat, and all the others have weaned around 18 months, very gradually.
someone should have told me this 5 years ago!! 🙁
Agree – and is there a way to reverse the sag?! 🙂
Stand on your head!
Agree – and is there a way to reverse the sag?! 🙂
With my first my breasts got smaller but I weaned her abruptly. With the second and third my bikes got and stayed bigger so far… I nursed then monger though and used a lot of Shea butter so maybe it can be reversed
this is very encouraging to me! i was under the impression that the longer you nurse, the more saggy your breasts become. i’ve nursed all four of mine past the year mark. my baby is girl is 19 months and still nursing strong. thanks for the info!
My son weaned at 5 and my daughter at age 4 so between them I was consecutively nursing for 8 1/2 years. I started eating traditionally about when my son was 3 and at 42 I still do not have sagging breasts but I do think an adequate yoga practice has helped alot. Push ups and other exercises for my pectoral muscles I believe has helped a great deal to keep thier old shape.
I also wanted to add though that even if my breasts had sagged down to my navel i would do it all over again as nothing can compare not only witht he nutrition of breastmilk but with those precious bonding moments that I spent with my children during that time. Saggy breasts are a small price to pay in comparison.
I think sagging has to do with the size of breasts. As you may know, breasts are mostly fat, and if they are big, there is no way they are going to be standing up on their own. I nursed all 4 of my kids, still nursing my almost 3 y.o. and I wouldn’t say my breasts look perky at all. 🙂 But I really don’t care. They were made for nursing and not for other people’s appreciation.
However, I do think that if I had adopted a full fat diet I probably wouldn’t have the stretch marks I do. Marks of beauty they are. 🙂
Well hope your happy with your mark of beauty and long breast .
Shut up
Samantha Phillips Harris Something to know for when you start nursing 🙂