Breast Implants after Pregnancy

Over the years, factors such as pregnancy, breast feeding, and the force of gravity take their toll on a woman's breasts. As the skin loses its elasticity, the breasts often lose their shape and firmness and start to sag. Breast lift, or mastopexy, is a surgical procedure to raise and reshape sagging breasts; at least, for a time. If your breasts are small or have lost volume-for example, after pregnancy-breast implants inserted in conjunction with mastopexy can increase both their firmness and their size.

Many women seek mastopexy because pregnancy and breast feeding have left them with stretched skin and less volume in their breasts. However, if you're planning to have more children, it may be a good idea to postpone your breast lift. While there are no special risks that affect future pregnancies; for example, mastopexy usually doesn't interfere with breast-feeding, pregnancy is likely to stretch your breasts again and offset the results of the procedure.

Responding to hormonal changes during pregnancy, the breasts begin growing and peak in growth just before labour. After delivery, breast-feeding causes the breasts to stretch repeatedly. Once breast-feeding is complete, the breasts typically decrease in size, often to a size smaller than their pre-pregnancy size. Again, you may experience stretch marks and loose skin, and the breast tissue loses its resiliency and the breasts start to droop.

After pregnancy there are lots of different ways to improve the breasts. For improving the breasts, the procedure choice depends on the degree of tissue loss, the amount of drooping, and the patient's desire to replace lost volume and fullness.

Breast implants without a breast lift this can provide improvement in cases of mild droopiness. If the nipple is not too low, the skin and breast tissue is not too soft, and the patient is willing to accept some increase in breast size, this can be a good choice of procedure.

Breast lifts without implants will bring the nipples back up, generally along with tightening of the skin under the breasts. However, breast lifts alone will not fix the loss of fullness of the breasts, especially the upper breast area, which occurs following pregnancy.

Breast lifts with breast implants will not only bring the nipples back up but provide additional fullness and improved shape, particularly in the upper breast even when relatively small implants are used.

There is insufficient evidence regarding the absolute safety of breast implants in relation to fertility, pregnancy or breast feeding. While there is no convincing evidence of any special danger of breast implants for pregnant women or their children, studies are continuing to look for possible problems.