When deciding whether a boob job (also known as breast augmentation) is the right choice for you, it's essential to think beyond the present. It's every woman's dream to have perkier, fuller, and natural-looking breasts, but will your aspirations or goals of having children in the future affect your implants? Will you still be able to breastfeed? How will your implants look after carrying through pregnancy and nursing? Is it better to wait until after having kids to get implants?

This article will address some of the pressing questions and concerns about how breastfeeding can impact your implants.

Nursing with Implants

Once you get pregnant, you'll experience major changes in your body, but the most significant ones involve your breasts. Your hormones will kick in, and your breasts will become engorged with milk, which definitely expands and stretches the skin on your breast.

Typically, how well your beast recovers from these changes depends on individuals, the number of pregnancies you've had, how much your breast stretched, among other factors. Some women will find that the skin around the implant is sagging a little bit, but that can be fixed easily with a breast lift.

However, for most women, things often go back to normal soon after they've finished breastfeeding. Research involving 160 new mothers who had previously undergone breast augmentation found that nursing doesn't have a significant impact on the appearance of augmented breasts.

Will breastfeeding with implants be difficult?

The good thing with implants is that they tend to maintain the volume in the breast and don't change during pregnancy or after breastfeeding. However, do they make breastfeeding difficult? Here are some problems women with implants might face when nursing:

Low milk supply: Depending on how your breast augmentation surgery was done, you may have difficulties producing enough milk for your loved one. According to the Institute of Medicine, women who have breast implants are three times more likely to have a low milk supply than those who have never had implants. Physicians are not sure why breast augmentation has this effect, but it's evident that surgery has the potential to damage milk ducts, and the pressure from your implants could also hurt the breast tissue.

Inhibited letdown: With breast augmentation, there is always a risk of your nipples losing sensitivity, which leads to less-effective letdown and low milk production.

Sore nipples: Again, if your nipples become sensitive than normal, you'll develop sore nipples, which make breastfeeding painful.

Engorged breasts: Implants increase the risk of exaggerated breast engorgement.

Mastitis: Implants increase the risk of mastitis.

How about other body modifications?

 Traditionally, people used to tattoo and pierce their noses, ears, and mouth. However, in the past 20 years, tattooing and 'intimate piercing' in the genitals and nipples have become more common, especially among young women all over the world. These body modifications cause the following effects:

Nipple Piercings

• A pierced nipple can take up to a year to heal completely, and infection may occur if proper aftercare and universal precaution are not observed. Your body can also reject the nipple piercing (rejection is the body's natural reaction to foreign material being inserted into the skin), which may force you to let the piercing close and then re-pierce again. The repeated piercing can create scar tissue, which blocks milk ducts.

• Even in the absence of these complications, a recent study pinpoints a few reported cases of low milk production in women with nipple piercing because of possible blocked ducts.

• Milk leaking out the pierced nipple can flow too fast for your baby and cause choking.

That said, nipple piercing doesn't have to affect breastfeeding, especially if it's done right. Human nipples have so many pores, and it's unlikely that piercing will block all of them.

Note: It's best to use flexible PTFE barbells or remove your jewelry when feeding to prevent your baby from aspirating or choking.

Tattoos

Research shows that already present tattoos, either on the breast or elsewhere, don't impact breastfeeding. The likelihood of the ink used in tattoos migrating into a mother's blood plasma to the milk-making cells is nearly impossible due to the small size of the ink molecule. However, some inks have been known to contain bacterial contamination, which may cause an allergic reaction to your baby. To be safe, try not to get new ones while you're currently breastfeeding your little one.

The takeaway

Most women are able to breastfeed with implants without any effect. However, talk to your lactation consultant or plastic surgeon if you have any difficulties, including low milk production, discomfort, pain, or if you feel unhappy with the way your breasts look after breastfeeding. They'll advice on how to makes the most of breastfeeding and offer options to help your boobs look voluptuous, full, and perky again.