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. Â
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. Â
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
Its sad so many young women are consumed by vanity to the point of deciding not to nourish their children with their own breastmilk – nature’s most perfect food. It reflects strongly our cultural ideas that breasts are for entertainment or attraction, sex basically. No, we do not have breasts for men’s benefit but for our children’s benefit.
Also sad is that these women are misguided. The ‘sag’ is not caused by breastfeeding, regardless of how long or how often. It is part of the effect of the pregnancy hormones. Other contributing factors are pre-pregnancy size and the use of hormonal contraceptives. Not all women will get a sag or droop. Nursing does not contribute at all.
Sarah’s diet and weaning advice is absolutely right on for mom’s and baby’s nutritional benefit. My last baby is my healthiest and has had the benefit of the most traditional diet I’ve consumed. This is despite a maternal age when people say pregnancy and breastfeeding isn’t healthy!
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I wish I had known this before I nursed both my daughters. I nursed for almost 4 years straight, the first one for 26 months and she weaned a month after the second one and the second one weaned herself at 19 months. Mine are so saggy and despressing to look at. I have recently made a big overall to diet and wish I had done it much sooner, not only for this, but other reasons!
Chinese women are only allowed to have one child. How long is the average baby nursed in China? My uneducated guess is not long because the moms all have to work, most likely can’t afford a pump, and do you suppose the work conditions allow time for pumping? Dear me. Better example please. Super sag here and simply don’t mind!
Many Chinese women still have more than one. They simply pay the fine. Or they travel out of the country to have their second child there.
And with regards to their breastfeeding duration, I honestly don’t know. But I’m not going to jump to any conclusions based on my limited knowledge. I’m guessing though that there are vast differences between city and rural people, different social classes etc.
I wasn’t eating well when pregnant with my first, and I got stretch marks on my breasts. After weaning him at four years, they aren’t as perky as they used to be, but not pancakes, either. I find that most interesting–about the gradual weaning. When I was a new mom, I was planning to breastfeed for at least two years. I was with a group of other women, mostly mothers, and they were talking about extended breastfeeding and saying things like, “Can you imagine what that would do to your breasts??” Now I know what I’m going to say next time I hear that. 🙂
I think the key point missing here is….so what if your breasts sag? isn’t it worth it to nourish your children with breastmilk? it is awful that mothers or anyone would discourage breastfeeding for such a superficial reason. i guess this is unsaid because it is just understood….i hope so anyway!
Carly, I totally agree. Although, I thought it was mentioned or implied by someone else. I feel no matter what happens to a woman’s breasts from nourishing a child it is totally worth it.
I absolutely agree! I don’t believe that breastfeeding is the sole reason for saggy breasts, its also poor nutrition, and of course the main factor is pregnancy hormones but also somewhat hereditary. I think its terrible that a woman could be so selfish to choose what her body looks like over the health of her child. It’s downright wrong, and those women should be ashamed of themselves for being so selfish and self centered. Now I’m all about keeping up with my body and all but there are ways to do that with a healthy diet and proper exercise, and some women may go to the extreme and get a boob job and that’s fine too, but to sacrifice your child’s health over how your boobs look?? I just don’t understand those women.
Do you mind if I share this on my blog for my birth website? Giving you credit of course for writing it. I just want my clients to have access to it. Thanks.
Sure Kasey, that is fine. If you could link back to the original article on this site, that would be greatly appreciated.
Sarah, I’m curious as to why you said that? No, I’m not a lactation “specialist” unless you count that I nursed 4 kiddos. I’ve always kind of felt the same way, but never said anything since everyone seems to think they know more than moms who were successful breastfeeders. I was in the “meeting” for breastfeeding moms, and the lactospecialist I could tell right off hated me. I wasn’t the only one to notice this. We realized why later. At my age I was able to go around and help many of the new moms, verbally instruct them through the process of latching etc. and really a lot of it is just giving them the confidence and moral support they might not be getting at home. Well, the lacto specialist was trying to set them up with all kinds of equipment. I went to one more meeting to confirm my suspicions. Yep, I feel totally confident in my thoughts. It made me very sad, and I feel a lot of moms were not successful due to using a tube to feed their infant. If your familiar with any of the equipment used, it can be a godsend for those who really do need it. For the majority though, I think it’s a hindrance.