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. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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!
Jess Spangler via Facebook
Too late for me!
Sarah Jones Mosley via Facebook
It is a combination of genes + diet + nursing/weaning habits, I think. I suspect that the genes weigh more heavily than we’d wish, but you do what you can. 🙂
Elizabeth Bivens via Facebook
one word: gravity!
thehealthyhomeeconomist via Facebook
The post mentions that all women are different and sometimes drooping can occur anyway (certainly gravity and age play roles as well), but many women, me included, had no changes whatsoever to the breasts before baby was born. Pregnancy affected them not at all.
Freedom
I also had no changes to my breasts before the baby was born. I did not breastfeed. My milk came in anyway 3 days later, making my A/B size breasts into D size. About a week later when all the milk went away, I was left with saggy breasts. Therefore it was not breastfeeding that did it, as I formula fed. It was a result of having a baby, aka pregnancy.
El Temeroso via Facebook
I can help as a spotter if any of you girls need one! Git R Done ; 0
Rebekkah Smith
I definitely think this is some great advice! While I only nursed mine to about a year, I followed all the other guidelines. While not quite the same as before, my boobs are in pretty good shape (pun intended lol). I think age of the mother has a lot to do with it too. I was 23 when my first son was born, 25 when my second was born, and I’ll be almost 27 when my third is born this month.
Baris
Wow amazing stuff as always. It’s funny how people will disregard common sense as to eating real food. The other sad thing is how we look at breastfeeding in our society. People are actually grossed out about this act of nature. I’m sure by educating enough people we can change this perspective. btw my last blog post also has a breastfeeding baby pic within it haha
Brenda Weston via Facebook
I read somewhere that it isn’t breast feeding that causes breasts to droop……….it is pregnancy. Just going through a pregnancy changes your breasts and perhaps drooping breasts is a normal part of having a baby even if you don’t breast feed.
Amanda
I have one saggy boob and one firm, I guesss I have the best of both worlds ; ) lol
Lacie
Me too! I wonder if it has anything to do with my son preferring one side over the other for so long lol
Sanja
I breastfed my son for 19 months and my breasts are not sagging at all (ok, my breasts are pretty small :).