Breast changes during pregnancy1/4/2024 ![]() “So you have a higher progesterone level to prevent milk secretion being activated. “You don’t want to be producing 800 ml a day while you’re pregnant,” says Professor Hartmann. Fortunately, your pregnancy hormones prevent them from making lots 9 – otherwise they’d be fit to burst by delivery day! “Throughout the duration of breastfeeding, the structure and workings of the breast remain fairly constant until the baby starts to take less milk,” explains Professor Hartmann.īreasts start making milk during pregnancyįrom around halfway through your pregnancy, your alveoli are able to produce milk. The ducts have to expand by around 68% to accommodate the volume of milk speeding through to this small number of openings. The researchers also found nipples have fewer openings than previously thought: usually around nine, and sometimes as few as four. This whole process is known as the let-down reflex, and you might feel it as a tingling or whooshing sensation when you start to feed your baby – although some women feel nothing at all. The alveoli are surrounded by muscle cells that contract in response to oxytocin, and it’s these contractions that push the milk through the ducts towards the nipple. The milk stays in the sacs until the hormone oxytocin is released in your body when your baby starts sucking your nipple. These sacs are connected to the ducts by even smaller tubes called ductules. Instead, milk is made and collected in the alveoli. 5 The ducts are actually small tubes, just a few millimetres wide, that transport the milk rather than store it. Research by Professor Hartmann’s colleague Dr Donna Geddes and her team, supported by Medela, revealed that breasts function very differently. Incredibly, it wasn’t until 2005 that this was investigated further. ![]() 4 He concluded that the ducts stored milk, and released it through 15 to 20 openings in the nipple. ![]() Until this century, most medical knowledge of how breasts produce milk was based on experiments carried out by English surgeon Sir Astley Cooper in 1840. Read How your breasts change during pregnancy to find out more.īelieve it or not, it’s only recently that researchers have discovered how this web of ducts within the breast works. This activity inside your breasts can make them feel tingly, sore, swollen or heavy – all early signs of pregnancy. You have little branches of bud-like glands in the breast, and when you get pregnant these little buds grow out and form ducts and tiny sacs, called alveoli, to hold the milk.” “When you conceive, it switches on growth of the breast’s existing secretory tissue. “When you become pregnant, breast development really takes off,” says Professor Hartmann. “When you deliver the placenta, your level of progesterone begins to drop and lactation starts to take off” And the amount of blood flowing to your breasts doubles during pregnancy – which is why you may see the veins through your skin. Simultaneously, milk-producing cells called lactocytes start developing within your breasts. From the end of the first month of pregnancy, your breasts begin to transform into milk-producing organs.ĭuring this time, your milk ducts increase in number and complexity, and begin branching into an increasingly intricate feeding system. This cycle is interrupted when you conceive. When your body realises you’re not pregnant, the monthly ebb and flow of hormones begins again. You may notice your breasts feel a bit lumpy during the first days of your cycle – this is because they’re preparing for the possibility of pregnancy. Your breasts also refresh their own internal cells as part of your monthly menstrual cycle – which is why they may feel tender, sensitive or swollen around the time of your period. “After this age, development plateaus and the breast remains mature, but dormant.” “After puberty the breast continues to develop, and at each monthly cycle you add a little bit of secretory tissue up to the age of about 35,” explains Professor Peter Hartmann, an expert in the science of lactation at The University of Western Australia. But even though they might look fully grown after puberty, they’re not yet mature. Unlike most of your other organs, they don’t start growing until hormones released in puberty ‘activate’ them. Your breasts are constantly changing from puberty to menopause.
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