Breast life stages

As your body grows, develops and matures, so do your breasts. Here Let’s Talk Breasts takes a look at the many changes you and ‘your girls’ will experience during the course of your lifetime.

In utero

Before you’re even born, your breasts begin to form with two parallel thickenings in the chest area, called the mammary ridge or the ‘milk line’. Both females and males have these, likewise nipples, but later hormonal changes will begin the development of milk-producing breasts as we know them. Interestingly, newborn babies sometimes produce their own form of breast milk, known as Witch’s milk or neonatal milk. This is a perfectly normal effect caused by the maternal hormones to which the baby has been exposed prior to birth, and will dry up within a few weeks without treatment.

Childhood

During childhood, your breast tissue remains dormant until puberty and boys and girls look much the same in the chest department. Shockingly, however, a new study released by the medical journal Pediatrics has revealed that an increasing number of girls are starting puberty at the ages of seven and eight. The journal suggests that this is linked to hormones consumed in the increased amount of animal protein in our modern meat and dairy-heavy diet.

Puberty and early adulthood

At the onset of puberty, your ovaries start secreting oestrogen, and fat accumulates within the connective tissue of the breasts. At this point the breasts grow larger in size, the areolas (the area around the nipples) darken, and the nipples themselves become more prominent.

During your teens your breasts become increasingly full and buoyant, and they will have reached their full size by the onset of adulthood. Marlowe’s nubility hypothesis suggests that early man used breast size and perkiness as a sign of fertility for sexual selection, so a female with a flat chest would be considered infertile, protruding and firm breasts would indicate fertility, and drooping or ‘empty’ breasts would signal low reproductive value.

Pregnancy

During pregnancy, increased levels of progesterone and oestrogen prepare your breasts for lactation. Inside, more lobules form within your milk duct system, while outside your breasts swell, with the areola becoming darker. Already by end of the second trimester, your breasts are capable of producing milk should you give birth prematurely.

Breastfeeding

By the end of the third trimester, your breasts have swelled considerably larger than your pre-pregnant state, and are filled with a greater supply of blood vessels to support the increase in gland production. Infant suckling stimulates your breasts to produce milk, and within the first two to three days the milk will come in, leading to a temporary hot, flushed and ‘full’ feeling, which will naturally calm down as your breasts adjust to regulate the amount of milk your newborn needs.

After breastfeeding ceases, you’ll probably notice a certain loss of tissue and perkiness, you may have stretch marks, and your breasts might even be smaller than they were pre-pregnancy. This is due to the pregnancy itself, rather than the effects of breastfeeding alone.

Menopause

During the menopause, dropping hormone levels cause the breasts to lose glandular and fatty tissue, and the connective breast tissue gradually becomes less supple. Over time these changes lead to your breasts sagging and losing their rounded shape. A woman of post-menopausal age has an increased risk of developing breast cancer, but on the plus side, pre-emptive mammograms are far more effective, as the breasts become far less dense.