How to Recognise Your Pregnancy and Breastfeeding Breast Changes
The human body is amazing and you may only discover just how incredible it actually is during pregnancy. From the very first few days, your body undergoes several changes to look after, nurture and develop your unborn baby. Part of this includes a number of breast changes to prepare an intricate, complex feeding system, ready for when your little one arrives.
Apart from buying maternity bras, you may not give much thought to your breasts changing during pregnancy. However, some dramatic changes are under way. While amazing things are happening in your womb, your breasts are also going through an amazing transformation to get ready for your baby’s arrival.
- Your breasts are unique human organs, and it’s only during pregnancy and lactation that they become fully mature.
- From the end of the first month of pregnancy, your breasts begin to transform into milk-producing organs. Your breastmilk ducts increase in number and complexity, and begin branching into an increasingly intricate feeding system.
- The amount of blood flowing to your breasts doubles during pregnancy – which is why you may start to see the veins through your skin. Geddes DT.
- The ducts are actually small tubes, just a few millimetres wide, that transport the milk rather than store it. Milk is made and collected in the alveoli. These sacs are connected to the ducts by even smaller tubes called ductules. When baby starts sucking on mum’s nipple, the muscles surrounding the alveoli contract, and it’s these contractions that push the milk through the ducts towards the nipple. Inside the Lactating Breast.
- Eventually, your breasts will return to their pre-pregnancy state. Then, if you get pregnant again, the same cycle of growth and development will begin anew.
For more information on breast changes, pop over to our website to watch the video, Where Breast Milk Starts