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!
Jennifer Zint
After 4 kids and 20 plus years of nursing –I also feel it is the number of pregnancies that may account for the sag–but I am not a pro bra wearer either.
Helen Kyriacou Rainey via Facebook
Wish I had read all of this 10 years ago before I started nursing all my kids! ha ha ha 🙂
AshleyRoz
Breastfeeding doesn’t cause sagging. Being Pregnant does. I really wish people would stop perpetuating this myth. The breasts swell regardless of whether you PLAN on nursing anyway. I would be really great if you would mention that in this blog. I feel like even though you’re trying to help with advice for preventing it, which is great; pregnant and lactating women DEFINITELY need some help in the diet department but saying the sagging happens after the fact is flat out wrong and sabotaging.
“A study published in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal found that the number of past pregnancies had a more significant impact on the shape of the breasts than breastfeeding. The researchers concluded that ptosis after pregnancy was caused not by breastfeeding but by hormone regression and increased strain on breast skin from the engorgement of pregnancy. The article states:
‘A history of breastfeeding was not found to be associated with a greater degree of breast ptosis in patients presenting for postpregnancy aesthetic breast surgery. Age and cigarette smoking, both of which are associated with a loss of skin elasticity, were found to be positive predictors for breast ptosis, as were larger prepregnancy bra cup size and number of pregnancies. Whereas breast ptosis appears to increase with each additional pregnancy, breastfeeding does not seem to worsen these effects.’ “
Csilla Bischoff
I think this has much to do with genetics and what size breasts you start out with before pregnancy. My mom had perky breasts till she was in her mid 50-ies. She breastfed us. I have perky breasts, even after nursing two kids for 2.5 years. I am 45. My sister had a bit more larger breast and looks more like my grandma on my dad’s side. Her breasts were droopy after the first child. But we are from Europe and we do not start to wear a bra as early as they do here and if you had perky and small breasts you did not wear a bra every day actually.
Sarah
Currently nursing 1 year old. She has little to no interest in solid foods. She might eat 5 bites of fried egg yolk if it is off of my plate. One time she actually ate 1/4 of an avocado. I was shocked that she ate that much. Is there any reason to be concerned? I am trying to follow her lead but she LOVES nursing and is eating 6x a day still. All seems to be normal and healthy.
Megan @ Purple Dancing Dahlias
My babies love nursing too and rarely ate anything before the age of one, my last baby didn’t really start solids until he was around 15 months old. All babies are different and as long as you are offering her a variety of nutrient rich foods she will become interested, all in her own time. 🙂 Just make sure that your diet is the best in can possibly be.
Sarah
Thank you for the encouragement, Megan. This baby is so different from our first 2! She is blessing that we waited and prayed for 8 years to get. In that time we have dramatically changed how we eat. In a way it feels like the first time all over again since we are doing things differently.
Rebecca
Sarah, our third baby has been like you describe. She’s 19 mos now and eating more but didn’t really become interested in food until 14 mos or so. Even now she’ll still skip meals once and a while. Following her lead and nursing on cue is perfect. You’re doing just what she needs!
sumeyye
My daughter never liked eating until she turned 18 months old. She eats like a champ. I never insisted or pushed her. Wait and see, they change a lot! And try to eat by saying yumm, hmmm, she will come around and eat:)
Carly
Wish I would have known this!! But if what Grace said is true then that’s why mine are droopy & quite ugly now! I lose my baby weight very rapidly after baby, so fast that I feel frail & this second time around, I’ve eaten healthier than most people i know! Is there any way to make already stretch mark, saggy ones heal up or strengthen?
Olivia Backstrom via Facebook
Rebound exercise (on a quality mini trampoline) perks them up as it does all saggy skin from either weight loss or pregnancy skin.
faeriegrove
doing this would be PAINFUL for me, unless I had my breasts bound tight to my body, and wouldn’t that cancel out the benefit of doing it?
Ashley Rozenberg via Facebook
Breastfeeding doesn’t cause sagging. Being Pregnant does. I really wish people would stop perpetuating this myth. The breasts swell regardless of whether you PLAN on nursing anyway. I would be really great if you would mention that in this blog. I feel like even though you’re trying to help with advice for preventing it, which is great; pregnant and lactating women DEFINITELY need some help in the diet department but saying the sagging happens after the fact is flat out wrong and sabotaging.
A study published in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal found that the number of past pregnancies had a more significant impact on the shape of the breasts than breastfeeding. The researchers concluded that ptosis after pregnancy was caused not by breastfeeding but by hormone regression and increased strain on breast skin from the engorgement of pregnancy. The article states:
“A history of breastfeeding was not found to be associated with a greater degree of breast ptosis in patients presenting for postpregnancy aesthetic breast surgery. Age and cigarette smoking, both of which are associated with a loss of skin elasticity, were found to be positive predictors for breast ptosis, as were larger prepregnancy bra cup size and number of pregnancies. Whereas breast ptosis appears to increase with each additional pregnancy, breastfeeding does not seem to worsen these effects.”
Marija
Thanks so much for posting this research Ashley. I’ve heard this myth about sagging breasts a lot and am glad to know a resource to refer people to for accurate information.
Lisa Olson via Facebook
The saggy-ness comes more from pregnancy than breast feeding. This is just one quick link, but I know I’ve read it often elsewhere. http://www.phdinparenting.com/2010/04/04/sagging-breasts-whats-to-blame/#.UEdrx4l5mc0
Tiffany @ DontWastetheCrumbs
Not that all doctors are right, but I’ve heard this from a few of ours as well.
Katie
I’m an IBCLC (certified Lactation Consultant) and this is right – sagginess happens because of breast changes during pregnancy and age too – everything starts to soften with age anyway. Not that eating a healthy diet couldn’t be helpful for keeping skin more elastic longer.
Belle
Actually, ABC posted a story yesterday about how nursing can be beneficial to the look of breasts! Yay! http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=17143971