Breast aesthetics during pregnancy is one of the most frequently asked questions by women.
Breast aesthetics, as you may be aware, is one of the most common plastic surgery procedures performed worldwide.
As a plastic surgeon, my second favorite topic after facelifts is breast aesthetics. I can say that I am well-versed in both my practice and its philosophy.
When my clients and patients sit in the examination chair, the questions they ask are diverse, especially when it comes to breast aesthetics. There is a lot of misinformation out there about the relationship between pregnancy processes and breast aesthetics.
In this article, I will discuss the relationship between breast aesthetics and pregnancy, which I believe requires extensive explanation.
I don't just mean breast augmentation with silicone breast implants when I say breast aesthetics. At the same time, breast lift, suspending, reduction, lift, and augmentation surgeries, which we both lift and enlarge, are evaluated under the umbrella term of breast aesthetics.
Pregnancy begins with the process of becoming a mother candidate and is a miraculous process that lasts until birth; however, the change experienced by the mother in the woman's breast is not limited to only 9 months, and the postpartum and breastfeeding processes are the processes in which the woman's breast continues to change.
When a woman is planning breast aesthetics, especially during her reproductive years, she wants to understand and predict two general scenarios involving her breast.
Scenerio 1; Can a woman who wants breast aesthetics, whether it's silicone breast surgery or an erection, suspension, or reduction operation, give milk? Can she breastfeed?
Scenerio 2; A woman considering breast augmentation wants to know what happens to her breast after pregnancy. If the breast has enlarged, will it be larger? If the breast is lifted, will it sag again or will it augmented if it has been reduced?
Before we get into the scenarios above, consider what happens to the female breast during and after pregnancy.
What kind of change does the female breast undergo during and after pregnancy?
From the beginning of the pregnancy process, the female breast grows with the effect of estrogen and progesterone hormones, the breast canals multiply, and the volume to increase milk production for the mother to breastfeed her baby after birth increases.
Women gain weight during pregnancy in an attempt to evolve to this process. (By storing nutrients, the woman's body tries to ensure that the baby's milk intake process continues for months; in this regard, the woman's body acts as a reservoir.)
In fact, in societies where food was scarce, this approach persisted instinctively, and pregnant women were even encouraged to gain weight. As a result, both the mammary gland and the weight gained contributed to the growth of breast tissue.
Of course, today's health criteria reduce the average weight gain required during a pregnancy and prepare us accordingly, but I've included your weight gain in this scenario as I deal with breast changes.
Then, prolactin hormone is introduced into the birth and breastfeeding processes, and the breast glands work harder and more frequently to produce milk with the baby's suckling reflex, causing the breast to grow volumetrically. Although not every woman reacts the same way to this process, the female breast usually continues to grow during this time.
The mammary glands shrink and the breast volume decreases when milk and lactation cease. Most women lose the majority of the weight they gain during this process, which takes about 6 months after breastfeeding. The female body returns to its pre-pregnancy state.
If the breast tissue (gland) and the skin tissue surrounding the breast do not adapt sufficiently to grow and then shrink during this process, women will experience emptiness and sagging.
As I previously stated, I convey this process in this manner, but not all women will experience the entire process in this manner; for example, a woman's breast can almost be restored after breastfeeding, while for another woman, sagging does not occur after breastfeeding.
But, as it dealt with pregnancy and breast aesthetics, I wanted to write about every possible scenario in every detail.
As for the answers to the scenarios that the patients are curious about;
Senaryo 1; Can a woman who wants breast aesthetics, whether it's silicone breast surgery or an lift, suspension, or reduction operation, give milk? Can she breastfeed?
The answer is yes, a woman can breastfeed after these breast aesthetic procedures, whether she has had silicone breast augmentation or lifting and reduction surgery. Since the mammary gland and canals are not harmed during these procedures. In very rare cases where the breast is excessively large, the breast canals may be cut during the breast reduction procedure. As a result, breastfeeding is not possible after the operation, but we plastic surgeons have already planned this technique for patients in periods when the patient group is infertile or to reduce extremely large breasts. I mean, it's very rare.
Scenario 2; What happens to the breast of a woman who wants to have breast aesthetics after pregnancy? If the breast has enlarged, will it be larger? If the breast is lifted, will it sag again or will it augmented if it has been reduced?
Everything is changing around here. Whether or not it is breast surgery, the processes I described above change the structure of the breast. But everyone's different.
How different?
Breastfeeding deforms a breast that has had breast aesthetics in three ways;
- We do nothing because the breast deforms very little.
- The breast is slightly deformed, and a small revision lift can be added.
- The breast can be deformed intensively (especially in patients who gain and lose a lot of weight during pregnancy, or in patients who have a tendency to have a lot of discharged breast tissue after breastfeeding), and the augmentation is renewed, and possibly a silicone implant is used.
In most of the scenarios I listed above, patients follow scenarios 1 and 2 , so we either do nothing or apply a revision lift.
However, it is impossible to predict which patients will go through which processes and eventually join which group; this is a personal process, and as a result, it can be evaluated approximately 2.5-3 years after pregnancy and breastfeeding. But the most important thing to understand is that women understand that these issues can be resolved regardless of the outcome of these processes.
To summarize briefly, this popular breast aesthetics procedure can be planned both after and before the pregnancy process. With the right guidance, information, and practices, women can live a more confident and comfortable life with happy and healthy breasts.
