Hi everyone, Melissa here from CloudMom.com so we talk a lot on the site about breasts.
Usually it's about getting breasts to produce enough milk as possible and taking care of
them when they hurt from nursing- nipples, fiscers, breast cream, nursing pads, you know
all those kinds of things, but today I actually wanted to ask another question for moms who
have finished nursing one child or more than one, and here's the question: do you think
that nursing and pumping affected your breasts? I don't want to use the word "ruined"
because it's too negative. Do you think that they negatively affected your breasts?
And this is kind of a debatable thing. You do hear, and I did read up on this a little
bit, but you do hear from people that it's not necessarily just the nursing and the pumping,
breasts can also be affected by pregnancy and especially by weight gain during pregnancy.
And then of course, you do hear that nursing and pumping can slowly decrease the breast
tissue and that your breasts can sort of lose volume when you're done. Now okay, this
is kind of a tricky thing, I'm going to get down to dirty here guys, I'm going to
tell you exactly what my experience has been. And I did shoot a video on this a while ago
when Jessica Simpson showed off her post baby cleavage and I wanted to be like "Whoa!
This is not my situation." But here's the deal, I have now nursed, I've told people,
more than 6 years. So the first three babies I actually think I was pretty much okay- it
wasn't that bad. Granted I was constantly getting pregnant again and then nursing so
it was a little bit hard to tell. Baby number 4 I was still hanging in there. Baby number
5 this was tough, this was really tough. When I was done I really felt very flat. I
was never a big, big chested person but I always like a 34B. I don't even want to
tell you guys what I am now -30B. Okay, so what am I doing about this? I'm struggling
with it; I'll be honest with you I am struggling with it. Fortunately on the husband side,
he's an angel, says it's not an issue. I sometimes feel embarrassed like if I'm
at the gym or whatever, like honestly I'm so flat. Now here is the thing, they have
come back a bit. I stopped now a year ago and even in the past few months I've noticed
they are slowly coming back so I do think that there's hope, but I wouldn't rush
out and get expensive surgery. And honestly, I do also feel like these days they can almost
do anything. This is the latest bra I have, it was expensive, but it's so worth it.
It is called Wacoal. Okay, this isn't really a bra. You know what this is; this is a bra
with foam breasts inside. I mean this isn't just a padded bra because they told me I can't
have a padded bra or a lift up, I've got nothing to lift up, I've got no volume,
I'm like "Oh my God!" But so look at this, it's kind of sexy too, right? And
honestly guys, this thing, looks, you really I don't think you can tell. Okay, now I'm
giving away all my dirty secrets. It can really create the allusion of breasts, of at least
small breasts. So anyway, I would be lying to you if I told you that I didn't think
that nursing and pumping had an affect on breasts. I do, I really do. I think that if
you just nurse a few months, like 6 months and you don't pump the living daylights
out of your breasts, I think you can be fine. My mom said she's totally fine, she's
nursed like 4 babies for 6 months each, the woman's like 73, honestly she doesn't
look so bad, she looks pretty good. She looks great actually. So anyway, I do think it depends
on the person, but I have to say from my own experience that it is something I do worry
about, think about, deal with, I've tried to come up with different solutions. I don't
think I'm going to go the surgery route. I haven't ruled it out, but I don't think
I will. But I do think that it has had an affect and I do think well maybe I should
have done a little bit less, but that's where I am. I am happy that I did what I did
for my babies. And you know, anyway. But I can't say that it's all perfection on
the other side. So anyway, moms what has been your experience? Go to another site too, here's
this other site and it's great, hold on sorry. Okay, this is great, mothering.com.
I thought this was amazing. Women were really talking about how they felt about their breasts.
Some of it was really inspiring like how they feel so much more like a mother now and they're
fine with it. So I really enjoyed reading some of the comments on that site, I'm going
to put the link up on CloudMom.com. So please weigh in on this site on this really important
issue, your post nursing and pumping breasts, how do you feel about them and what do you
do? And thank you for watching.