Before my first son was born, I was determined to prepare myself as best as I could for breastfeeding. I poured over the pamphlet that was handed to me at one of my pre-natal visits. I read a whole book devoted to the subject. I attended a breastfeeding class at our local hospital.
I knew breastfeeding might be a little challenging, and maybe at first there would be a slight learning curve, but I was PREPARED. I had goals. I had determination. I had a vision for how this was all going to go down. Spoiler alert: nothing prepared me for breastfeeding with huge boobs.
I gave birth and reality hit.
I was faced with a major obstacle. Make that two major obstacles. Ginormous boobs. No one ever mentioned what breastfeeding would be like for the gals that have a bigger stash on their dash, so to speak. The book I read didn’t go over it, nor the instructor of the breastfeeding class, nor that dang pamphlet that made it all look deceptively simple.
Let’s just keep it real. If you are like me and have larger ladies to start with, the first few weeks of breastfeeding will not be the same for you as it is for your neighbor who is sporting a B cup.
Here is what you can expect when you’re breastfeeding with huge boobs.
You might have to go bra shopping twice.
Most women will find that sometime during pregnancy they outgrow their normal bras and need to shop for new pregnancy bras. Whelp, if your cup was already full to the brim, prepare to go shopping again for even bigger nursing bras once the babe is born because your pregnancy bras will probably not contain your lactating boobs. You might ask yourself prior to giving birth how they can get any bigger?!? It seems impossible, but they do.
The standard breast pump shields are not made for large boobs.
I never thought about “trying on” the shields before I gave birth because I never considered they might not fit. Let me just tell you, one size does NOT fit all. I ended up having to make a special trip to the hospital maternity shop to buy a much larger set because there was NO WAY my big nips were fitting into the standard-size shields that came with the pump. Picture Shaq trying to fit inside a Mini-Cooper. It ain’t happenin’. Had I known this would be an issue ahead of time, I could have saved an extra trip to the hospital.
Multi-tasking is dang near impossible.
Vacuuming while you breastfeed? Probably not going to happen. Texting while you breastfeed? That’s going to be a challenge. Flipping through tv channels while you breastfeed? Not likely. Here is the reality: one hand will need to support your baby and the other hand will have to manhandle your huge boob. As I mentioned earlier, I had relatively large gals before giving birth, but once they were engorged with milk it was like unleashing a watermelon on my poor son’s face. I imagine for him it must have either felt terrifying or like he had won the lottery. Either way, there was no way for me to multi-task with both hands in use at all times. Eventually, I did learn how to strategically place 14 pillows around my body in order to free up a hand, but it took me aa while to figure it out!
You will start to wonder if your boobs will ever go back to a reasonable size.
Take heart. Eventually, your girls will go back to their normal size (as disappointing as that might be for your partner). You will rescue your regular bras from the bottom of the drawer, and you will be able to multi-task with the best of them. In the meantime, try and embrace what Mother Nature has provided. She may have gone a little overboard, but she had good intentions.
Related: The Best Places to Find Nursing Bras in Larger Sizes
Also, no one prepared me that my nips might be too big for my newborns’ mouths! This was extremely frustrating and made it difficult for them to latch properly, creating really sore nipples. They just wouldn’t fit in their mouths, plus the areola! I’m really how’s all the supposed to fit in that tiny mouth? awful experience!
I could not have done it without the Breast Friend pillow, and then Boppy Nursing Pillows. And in the first few weeks it was a challenge for my daughter to latch on, her mouth was too small for the nipple, so only certain nursing positions worked. I don’t think I have ginormous boobs, but they got there with pregnancy and even more so after birth, and everyone has a different shape – so yeah don’t expect you can nurse baby in any position, such as the football hold, it depends on what works with your body.
It’s not as easy as you would think. Unfortunately because of how large my boobs were I was unable to get my daughter to latch while breastfeeding and ended up pumping instead.
My favorite is all the resources and LC’s suggesting getting the “whole areola” into baby’s mouth for the proper latch. Um. Not possible? I’m not only well-endowed, but my babies are well-endowed in their own right (i.e., big babies :)), and still, not possible. Still, I thankfully have breastfed all my babies so far, so not complaining. Side note: This is one of the reasons I prefer the sidelying position for nursing. They discourage it in the hospital (“only for more experienced/older babies”), but I otherwise feel like I’m smothering my newborn, and it doesn’t involve gravity 🙂 (Oh – and I can doze off :)). Also, when my milk comes in, I get some really annoying “back pain” ( and the feeling like it hurts to breathe), which in the scheme of things, I usually ignore, having just gone through childbirth, and in the moment, I can’t remember why I have it. But it comes to me not too long after… it’s the sudden filling of the ducts that were kind of dormant for a while now, and all my body weight just shifting around, etc…
This is no lie. I knew it was going to be a road breastfeeding in the beginning….. but I thought I would at least have a free hand at some point.
🙌I went into a specialty bra store and asked for 36M Nursing Bras and the poor woman looked at me in fear
Yasssss finally someone addressing the huge boob nursing challenges! We need to talk about these more T_T I saw a pic a few days on IG on one of the mom grams I follow and this mom was cooking and nursing and I was like wouldn’t it be so nice?????? Instead I HAVE TO SIT FOWN and have babe on a pillow so that I can use my phone lol
Oh my word! So much truth! I thought something was wrong with me for so long! My mother-in-law talked about how one day I would become so proficient at breastfeeding that I would be able to grocery shop at the same time. Needless to say I was very disappointed.
Thank you for this post! This is something I’ve been wondering about. Can I ask how big you consider “ginormous” to be?
Hey Jessica! I can’t speak for others but I found some of this to be true for me (mainly the needing two hands bit) and I’m normally an E cup. Large but I’m not sure I’d say ginormous. I hope that helps!
Ooh, don’t make promises on the “return to regular size” bit ;-). While the DO get smaller when milk regulates (well, a little) and they do get a bit smaller when you wean, they are NOT necessarily going back down to the previous bra size! Some women get lucky there, but some don’t. I keep some of the size every time, and since I started large and am currently nursing my fourth newborn, well…let’s say I hang out in parts of the alphabet not usually seen by bras.