What happened to your breasts? (read, for most women who have had kids and breastfed, WHERE DID MY BREASTS GO?) Please remember with this I am a HUGE FAN of breastfeeding. I can’t imagine having the ability to help your child in all areas, particularly the bonding, intelligence, and immunity, and not do it. I breastfed all three of my children for 9 months to over a year. But pregnancy and breastfeeding do affect your breasts.
General rules of thumb with the breasts:
As you age your breasts change. Breasts are primarily a mix of breast tissue (a kind of fibrous substance with breast glands, ducts, and milk when you are breastfeeding) and fat. When you are young, more of your breast is breast tissue. This tissue tends to be dense. Part of the reason we don’t mammogram younger women, in addition to the fact their cancer rates are low, is we can’t see much on the film due to the denseness of the breast tissue. As you get older, your breast composition becomes fattier. With this change in composition, the breast volume changes more with weight change.
In general I see trends in women who have breastfed. The longer you breastfeed, the more change you have. So a woman who has breastfed for 3 months has fewer changes than one who has fed for a year. The more kids you have, the more change. And again, read my breastfeeding tips on my blog, and try to feed evenly on each breast. (yes yes, I know. Your baby likes one better, one makes more, yadda yadda. But trust me.)
We as a generation do not look the same as our mothers. Overall, particularly here in the Bay Area, we had our children at an older age. Many of us had multiple children. And here in Palo Alto there is signficant, good support to breastfeed. Hence the larger changes to our breasts than our mother’s.
If you were small breasted to begin with, the babies may have left you with nothing. Welcome to why breast implants are so popular.
If you were large breasted to begin with, welcome to why your breasts now touch your knees, you are short waisted (or long breasted as I like to call it), and you have to wear a bra 24 hours a day. Welcome to why breast reductions and lifts are so popular.