Do breasts get bigger when you eat during lactation?

Breasts are the second characteristic of women. In many cases, we think that women are beautiful because of their breasts. Therefore, many young mothers are unwilling to breastfeed their babies themselves because they are worried that their breasts will shrink or become deformed after breastfeeding. Some people have not even given their children colostrum, and directly choose to feed them with milk powder.

So do breasts really shrink after breastfeeding? If it is true, what is the cause? Regarding these issues, I can explain them one by one for everyone in the following article.

Breast structure

Women's breasts are often different from men's. They look plump and enlarged because they are full of mammary ducts, mammary tubes, fat tissue and fibrous tissue. Among them, the existence of ducts and tubes is for the secretion and transportation of milk, while fiber and fat can support and protect the ducts and tubes. That's why all breasts exist for feeding babies breast milk.

Breast enlargement during pregnancy

For non-pregnant women, breast size usually depends on the amount of fat in them. However, the real purpose of female breasts is to breastfeed.

When a woman enters pregnancy, the originally small mammary ducts begin to grow rapidly, the mammary tubes begin to rise, and alveoli begin to form at the end of each tube. In the middle and late stages of pregnancy, that is, from thirteen to twenty-seven weeks of pregnancy, the alveoli gradually develop metabolic cavities to serve as a short-term storage of milk. At the same time, in order to secrete enough milk after giving birth and to breastfeed quickly, the volume of the gland ducts and tubes continues to expand.

Of course, in order to protect these glands and tubes, and to store enough energy for breastfeeding, the amount of fat in the breasts will also increase. In a short while, the pregnant mother's breasts will become taller and more majestic than ever before.

How do breasts shrink after weaning?

A woman's breasts do grow larger during pregnancy. So we are back to our original question: Will the breasts get smaller after breastfeeding?

In fact, breasts tend to shrink after weaning mainly due to two aspects.

First of all, from a physiological point of view, the expansion of breasts is mainly to meet the needs of breastfeeding. After breastfeeding, the enlarged mammary glands will gradually shrink and the metabolic cavity will disappear. Correspondingly, the breasts are becoming smaller and smaller.

In addition, if pregnant women eat less and consume insufficient energy during breastfeeding, resulting in nutritional imbalance, the fat originally stored in the breasts will also be used up in large quantities. So after weaning, the mother's breasts will appear much smaller than during pregnancy. For a while, it is hard for female friends who pursue beauty to accept it.

It can be said that, theoretically, breast shrinkage after weaning is inevitable. But it is not inevitable.

In fact, after the breastfeeding period is over, the woman's body returns to its pre-pregnancy state. At this time, the size and fullness of the breasts mainly depend on the composition of their fat. In other words, if the diet during breastfeeding is reasonable and nutritious, the fat in the breasts will not be used, which can reduce the rate of breast shrinkage and perhaps increase the amount of fat accumulation. In this case, when the breastfeeding period ends, although the breasts cannot be as large and full as during pregnancy, they will at least be much larger than when preparing for pregnancy.