Women can avoid saggy breasts from breastfeeding in most instances when dietary preparation and proper weaning precautions are taken 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 their baby because they’ve been warned, usually from their Mothers, 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 naturally with the best Nature can provide will ultimately sacrifice the firmness of their breast tissue and that saggy breasts post nursing are just part of the package.
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 women can implement prior to and during nursing that can greatly lessen the impact.
In fact, it is totally possible and even normal to nurse several children and have little to no change in the appearance of the bosom once weaning of the last child takes place.
Could Saggy Breasts Syndrome perhaps primarily be the result of the appalling diet of most nursing mothers and the modern, abrupt approach to weaning rather than the act of breastfeeding itself?
Avoid Saggy Breasts by Preparing Breast Tissue with Diet
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 that a lowfat diet that eschews butter, cream, and other animal fats while including vegetable oils from factory produced, low cholesterol spreads, dressings, and other processed foods is not going to result in the elastic breast skin that avoids Saggy Breast Syndrome.
The reason is that every single cell in your skin and body has a cell membrane that should ideally be composed of at least 50% saturated fat. When the cell membranes of the skin are composed of mostly saturated fat like they should be, they are strong, resilient, and highly elastic with much cell membrane integrity.
Healthy Fats are Key to Healthy Skin
If you avoid saturated fats in the diet and misguidedly starve your skin of the saturated fat it needs, and instead consume factory-produced vegetable fats like soy and canola oil that are used heavily in nearly all processed foods, the cell membranes of your skin will incorporate some of these processed fats resulting in skin cells that are more easily damaged and not of the proper shape for the stretching and straining of nursing.
Plenty of saturated fats in the diet is also key to avoiding stretch marks on the breasts when the milk rapidly comes pouring in shortly after baby is born. Skin cells with highly saturated cell membranes will be elastic and not easily damaged by this sudden strain!
Elusive Nutrients
Plenty of vitamin K2 in the diet is important as well, largely found in animal fats. This largely ignored nutrient has been shown in Japanese women who eat lots of the Vitamin K2 superfood natto to confer superior skin elasticity and resistance to sagging and wrinkling. Over 90% of people are estimated to be seriously deficient in this nutrient! Grassfed butter, 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, which so many women preparing for pregnancy and nursing mistakenly avoid! Women in traditional Chinese provinces like Chongqing know better, however, as they are encouraged to eat up to 10 eggs per day along with plenty of chicken and pork while nursing! Perhaps this is one reason why it is rare to see a traditional Chinese woman with children who has breasts down around her belly button.
Arachidonic acid (AA) is an underappreciated fat for maintaining healthy skin.
Arachidonic acid is critical for the proper formation of the junctions between skin cells. Without enough arachidonic acid in the diet, skin cannot adequately maintain moisture and is more susceptible to damage as the water between cells evaporates from missing cell-to-cell junctions. (1)
Ideal Weaning Age to Minimize Saggy Breasts
In addition to diet, the approach a woman employs to wean her child significantly impacts the perkiness versus sagginess of her bosoms at the conclusion of breastfeeding.
The modern approach to weaning is to parent initiate the process and do so fairly suddenly once the child starts eating solid foods or Mom goes back to work.
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. Stopping nursing abruptly at this point is not a good idea! It can cause excessively saggy breasts in the same way as an obese person who undergoes gastric bypass surgery and loses weight rapidly. This usually results in pounds and pounds of excess skin that need to be removed by surgery years later.
Wean Gradually When Baby is Already on Solid Foods
The better way to wean is as gradually as possible, ideally somewhere between the 2-4 year mark. When weaning is very gradual with the demand for nursing by the child easing off slowly as his/her appetite for solid foods increases, the body has time to slowly shrink and reabsorb the breast tissue and skin that stretched and greatly expanded to accommodate large quantities of breastmilk when the child was an infant.
Think of the difference between someone who loses weight at a rapid pace which is what happens after gastric bypass surgery versus someone who loses weight more gradually with improvements in diet and exercise alone. In the first scenario, much excess, sagging skin that needs to be removed by surgery is the typical result; in the second scenario, excess skin problems are much less of an issue if at all.
Nursing a child until 2-4 years old mimics the practice of Traditional Societies. 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 with all the helpful immune-boosting factors until the child was well beyond babyhood.
Careful attention and thought to the diet followed well before pregnancy and during nursing as well as a slow instead of fast 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 afterward!
Other factors can influence the timing of weaning so it would be great to know any helpful alternatives to reduce chances of saggy breaks other than delaying weaning to age 2-4 year. My doctor has advised that weaning is the only way to get my hormone levels back to normal which will result in the womb and other sensitive tissues thickening back to pre pregnancy norms. I currently can’t enjoy a comfortable intimate relationship with my husband, apparently due to the thinning of these tissues which causes extreme pain. my son has just turned 6 months and I am starting to gradually wean (just one feed a day is now formula) but would like to know if other than eating more good fats if there is anything more I can do? I don’t want to sacrifice my relationship for the sake of my breasts, but also don’t want to them to disappear as they did after I stopped feeding my eldest at 10months. I’m not planning on having more children so can’t use the next pregnancy to reinflate them! Any advise would be much appreciated. (I’m based in the UK so would need to be able to access any wonder products from here!) thanks v much!
I recommend reading Diet Recovery and Doet Recovery 2 by Matt Stone. He explains about metabolism; what it really is and how to get it working again. Getting metabolism up helps with all sorts of issues. You will have to read it with an open mind because it is almost backwards from most health books, here in the US, anyway. They are both available on the Kindle through Amazon.com. I have been doing what it says in the books for about a year, but not to the full extent until recently. My temperature, first thing in the morning used to be 95.9°F-97.3°F. Now it is above 98°F for about 4 days. I have more energy and feel great. It is supposed to make your breasts bigger or with more tissue in them.
I read this article and tried doing my best to eat healthy and prepare myself for the changes pregnancy and breastfeeding would do to my body.
I was never well endowed (32b-32d at most) but once I started gradually weaning, my beasts seemed to go back down to a normally, pre-pregnancy size.
However once I finished weaning, the next week I was flat chested!!! They feel and they’re literally empty, as in nothing. I went to buy new bras (just to have support) but they’re so awkwardly shaped no cup size fits.
I already had issues dealing with insecurity but trying on 20+ bras at Kohl’s trying to find something just made me break down in tears.
Is this it? Has anyone else dealt with this? What do you think about this?
It’s been about a year now and i remember when i first weaned my son, quite suddenly, i was miserable with my chest. Very flat like deflated balloons. But I’ve been eating better and exercising, drinking alot of water and have noticed more fulness in my chest now. Not as full as pre pregnancy but alot better. Don’t give up hope! Just give it time
Yes I am in the same boat .My breasts were small but they were perky and nicely shaped. They became huge while pregnant and breastfeeding and I had 3 back to back. They seemed to get smaller and smaller with every baby. Now they are misshapen and also hard to fit. Makes me sad because I don’t like to see them .
Fill em up before stopping and bind with sports bra. Never stop when they are empty,
You may be exercising too much or not eating enough good fats or in general, that’s not normal for them to go down more than what you were before. Try Fenugreek I heard that it increases breast size.
I have nursed 7 children and birthed 9. My breasts started out as a 34b, at their largest ( not counting being engorged) were a full 36c. They were that way for years. After tandem nursing my most recent children for about 1.5 years I lost a significant amount of weight (from 200 to 130) and now my breasts are a 34a. There seems to be no density at all to them. Plus they are very saggy, what little there is. I am expecting again so maybe they will regain some of their old size! My husband always tells me he loves the way I look and we enjoy a very healthy intimate life although I am self conscious about my body. But I try not to let that attitude show in the bedroom. Its important to me to not put a damper on our lovelife not just for him but for me as well. I dont want him complaining about his big belly everytime we are in the sack! Lol!
I breastfed my daughter (my first and only child) until after she was 2 (nearly 27 months old) and at the beginning when breast milk comes in and is so full, you’d never expect that your boobs would shrink and sag but that is where I’m at. I noticed it slowly as I was weaning her gradually and now that we’ve been done for over a month, they are saggy and a lot smaller. I was a B cup before and while I still wear one now I don’t fill it out as nicely. In some ways now I’m glad I waited until I was 35 to have her, now I’m 37. Having said all of that, I would do it all again in a heartbeat, it was a great experience. My mother had a very different experience-she had me at 26 and no sagging breasts then had my brother at 37 and she actually grew a cup size. At 3.5 months old, my daughter started teething and wouldn’t drink well for a long stretch, I was determined not to give up. I never pumped which I now know helps increase more milk, my husband was overseas a couple months later and I was stressed out and it caused me to lose weight and keep it off (I weighed less than before getting pregnant). I tried so hard to gain but I think that may have had something to do with it. I hope to find a natural supplement to turn things around, even a little bit. One thing I didn’t do that I maybe wished I had have done is moisturized more but my organic lotions were lightly scented and I avoided them so it wouldn’t cause issues with nursing. A good collagen/elastin cream would help keep things firm.
I had saggy boobs, covered with stretch marks after pregnancy, not necessary to say that I didn’t like them. I was sceptical to think a product would work but I used the Somaluxe FIrming Lotion (the large bottle) and I am now-amazed at the result! my boobs appear firmer and the stretch marks are somehow less visible.best to give it a try, it worked for me, hopefully will work for you too, it feels that I have my pre-pregnancy/breastfeeding boobs back!
Don’t ask why a guy is posting here, was heart breaking to hear some ladies concerns. Breasts are great, but just breasts. Nothing compared to doing your family right and, having confidence in yourself. I love my wife no matter what she weighs before or after pregnancy/breastfeeding. She is concerned about weight and her appearance with all the changes, and wether I still find her attractive after. I tell her I think shes sexy no matter what, and she is. The only thing that concerns me is if she becomes unhealthy, or our kid does. Folks been breast feeding since the beginning of human history. Our culture in America is just friggin pretentious BS. Flush em!
well good for you…but you don’t understand!
Fantastic attitude! Thank you for your perspective. It helps.
After having my child I had the , most beautiful dd breasts. After I stopped breastfeeding my dd went to a small saggy b cup. I bought boobpop tool product not to grow back my gigantic breast feeding boobs. But to atleast gain some kind of tissue back into my breasts. After using for about 6 months my breasts are now a firm c cup
What are boobpop tools and where can I find them? Thanks!
There’s a very interesting dichotomy in these comments between those who claim to eschew “vanity” and “self image” in favour of selfless sacrifice for their children’s health and those who seem to think breast feeding is best kept to a minimum, out of sight and should stop when a child turns two.
A little depressing too that people are so quick to pass judgement on the all ultimately well thought out decisions of other parents.
So.. I think breast feeding is amazing, for the all the usual reasons, it allows a unique bond with your child, enables you to pass on antibodies and ultimately have a lot more control over your child’s nutrition (i.e. at any age, you’ll always have more say about your own diet than that of the cow or sheep which produced the bottled milk you buy).
I also see views which try to portray breast feeding as deviant, anti-social, unnatural etc. (many of which are expressed in phrases such a “suck” “suck”, “drank from the tap” etc.) as both degrading and ultimately reminiscent of long entrenched discourses that try to attribute sin to a a woman’s body and choices.
However, none of this should mean that we, as happily breast feeding mothers, should take the moral high ground. None of it means we should dismiss the “vanity” of others and box worries about self image, physical appearance, beauty, attractiveness away as shallow and irrelevant.
I can only speak for myself and those around me, but worries like these do matter to me, and not (only) because we flock around seeking society’s approval of our body image, but because we are all growing older and because love for our children isn’t diametrically opposed to love for ourselves- the two can actually complement each other. I’d chose a happy, satisfied, proud parent who feels pleasure and love for life over one who is tied up in all the sacrifices he or she made to have kids any day.
Rant aside, I think my experience corroborates the conclusions of this article. I breast fed my first child, who I had in my mid 20s, until he was 2, reducing feeds very gradually until, feeding on demand until I started work at 10 months and then slowly reducing it to night time only by about 18 months. My breasts stayed large, beautiful, good as new throughout and after I stopped.
I am still breast feeding my second child, who I had in my late 20s and is now 17 months old, however, as I had to start work far earlier with her (I began leaving her for 9 hours a day when she was 4 months old). I started noticing my breasts were really losing size (for the first time ever) at about 7 months. I’ve been feeding her in the evenings ever since, but I think what was, in effect, a sudden reduction in feeding so early has taken its toll. Its worth saying, though, that despite all that, I have been able to carry on producing enough milk for her although I started working so early and even though I realised in my first week back at work that the time I’d spend pumping milk in my lunch breaks wasn’t time efficient and I might as well work through and finish the day a little earlier to get back home.
According to my wife, the serum helps with her tummy as our baby grows. She said previously, her skin itched a lot as it stretched with the pregnancy. With Mederma, her skin has become elastic and adjusts well.
Some would disagree, Weston A. Price talks about going 2-3 years between pregnancies giving your body time to recoup, heal, and replenish the nutrients taken from mom during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Also just because you’re breastfeeding doesn’t mean you can’t get pregnant, and likewise just because you get pregnant doesn’t mean you can’t still nurse your baby. I know several people who have had their children very close together and nurse both, called tandem nursing.