Does your nursling prefer one of your breasts over the other? Do you have a preferred side? Does it cause your breasts to be lopsided? Before I had kids I could say: “I have one foot that is just slightly longer than the other, and way thicker hair on the right side of my head, but my breasts are nice and symmetrical.” In fact, my pre-kid boobs exuded the perky, stacked confidence I wish the rest of my body had back then.
Since I started nursing, however, and favouring the right side over the left, my right boob is noticeably larger than the left one. No one says anything, of course. My husband is oblivious to it unless I’m standing in front of him with my shirt up, grilling him on his opinion of my lopsidedness, pointing my nipples accusingly at him as if it’s really all his fault that this happened in the first place. Because I certainly didn’t mean for this to happen. But it did. Because five years ago I didn’t know the things I know now -
Like breasts make milk based on supply and demand. The more you nurse your baby, the more milk your breasts make. This is why moms of twins and triplets can successfully nurse their babies. If the demand is high, the milk production is high. As long as they don’t mind the sometimes embarrassing moments of leaking breasts and the constant demand of hungry babies, they will have enough milk. Even if a baby only wants to nurse on one breast moms can nurse successfully. Because some babies, as some of you may know from experience, for whatever reason, just reject certain ones of our breasts. What, you don’t like my mole? The milk isn’t good enough for you?
This isn’t my problem. My daughters liked both sides, but because I tend to prefer the right, there’s more milk in there and as a result my right breast is slightly bigger than the left. I know I should always offer the opposite breast at the next feeding. Usually I can tell which one it is too. But sometimes I just don’t, thinking I can make it up later. (Not such a good idea new moms. Try not to do this if you want to keep your girls perpendicular.) When it is offered, this leads to the left emptying sooner than the right, resulting in my nursling nursing longer on the bigger, fuller side.
I wish I could weigh them. I’m thinking there’s a 1/2 pound to 1 pound difference, but I would really like to find out for sure. I’m not sure how I could do that though. I don’t own a bathroom scale. But even if I did, placing it on the counter and lifting one boob onto it and then the other? Probably not going to work so well. Plus, if I can’t trust two scales to be within ten ponds of my entire body weight I don’t think I can rely on an accurate reading of two smaller devices still attached to my body. Hm, one says 7 pounds and the other says 13!
What I need is one of those large kitchen scales! They do have one at our local health food store. They keep it in this closet-like space with the spices, right behind the bulk grains, and next to the produce section. Maybe I could wiggle my way into there, balance my basket of carefully chosen large boxes of sugar-free organic cornflakes and phosphate free dishwasher detergent on the counter and then stealthily scoot behind them. Then I could whip out boob number one – kerplunk! – then number two – kerplunk! and take my reading. If someone saw and asked me what the hell I was doing I could wittily reply “Sorry! Just weighing my melons! Wrong section I guess.” Ha ha! But then I could never show my face in there again and that would be no good because the next closest worthwhile health food store is an hour drive away. Plus this one houses my favorite organic bakery. Damn!
I guess I’ll have to live with the burden of my lopsided breasts under the reassuring fact that many, many other breastfeeding moms also have this problem…
You do right? Come on. Anyone?
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- Who’s Breasts Are They Anyway?
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Tags: leaky breasts, supply and demand
Melodie, i am laughing as i am typing this comment!! i prefer my left but really try to make them equal, so i always offer the opposite breast at the next feeding. why don’t you go to the 1 hour away grocery store and do that experiment! funny post to start the week!
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Oh, me me! I spent the last 18 months of our 3.5-year nursing relationship being very lopsided! Like you Melodie, I had a slight preference for nursing on the right, with the same eventual result. We co-slept until my daughter was 2-ish, and I almost always nursed on the right at night. The good news is that after she weaned, my breasts evened out nicely. This time around, I’m going to try to balance things out more…
Thank goodness for padded nursing bras…
I tend to favor the left because then I can use the mouse and keyboard better (I am RT handed) but I think I produce more on the right regardless, it is more of the ‘lead’ if you know what I mean. I do try to balance out with the RT later.
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Lopsided breasts- my right side has always been bigger than my left, and my postpartum engorgement only seemed to emphasize that. So I tried to even it out by nursing my daughter only on the left side. It was actually really convenient: I held her in my left arm and my dominant right hand was available to hold books or surf the Internet at the same time. It was ideal. But it didn’t even out my breasts at all.
So I gave up. My right breast will always be bigger. Right now, my right breast is our “falling to sleep” breast because that’s the side she can sleep better on. That and if I’m lying next to her and she’s on my left side, she’ll unlatch and climb over me to go to the right side because it’s more comfortable for her. She’s picky.
TopHat´s last blog ..No Clothes for Me
OMG… I Can So Relate!! Even though I am the opposite I prefer the left over the right. I have an extremely noticeable difference. I just stop breast feeding so now I am working on bringing it back down to size as much as possible. My doctor is helping me so I’ll keep you updated about how things turn out. Fingers Crossed =)
my son flat-out refused to latch on to the left side for the first month of his life, so i had to pump, but my output was always much, much lower than my right side. eventually, even though he’d nurse on the left side, he still preferred the right, and my supply on the left side dropped lower and lower until around 5 months i said, “eh, screw it” and just nursed him exclusively on the right side from that point forward.
i am very, very lopsided, but it’s only really noticeable if you’re really staring at them, and hopefully no one is doing that.
sometimes it bothers me (my whole postpartum body bothers me, really) but i remind myself that my son is happy and thriving because of the milk that my one side gives him, and that’s worth any amount of lopsidedness…
my question is…will my right side shrink to the same size as the left once my son weans? or will i always be a lopsided freak?
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Oh Melodie!
My left has always been a teensy bigger (but I think only I noticed). However at about 4-6 mos postpartum with my first my breasts became insanely lopsided. I have big breasts anyways so it was really noticeable. Especially b/c summer was rolling around and tank tops and bathing suits made it hard to hide. I tried to offer the other, but he insisted on the left and I preferred it to. I do my best to keep them even, but if I let him choose for one night they were back to crazy lopsided.
Then I made my first attempt at pumping around 8-9 months. I had a simple hand pump and I put it to my right (the snubbed breast) and it took forever to get 2 or 3 ounces. I put it to my left breast (super boob!) and I literally got 6 ounces within a minute. It just poured out!
Aha! Why the heck would my kid want to work like crazy for a few drops when they could have the faucet turned on high! lol.
Anyways, I still insist they work on the right to maintain some sort of balance, but hey, what can you do
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My right side is my ‘good’ side. And it’s not just my choice, either. If my toddler lies down in my lap to nurse he positions himself at the right. In fact, he just did that now, as if he could read what I’m typing. It’s totally normal to have one side that produces more than the other, and most babies (of a certain age) will prefer it. I think that there’s only so much that you can do about it, honestly.
I know for sure that one side having more than the other is really common, every mom I talk to says this and I’ve read about it in books. I’m pretty sure I’ve also heard the right side tends to be the high producer. You are so not alone on this, if that brings you any solace!
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My right definitely produces more milk, but I’ve been lucky enough to keep my breasts relatively evenly sized
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I’ve always had lopsided boobs – my right is bigger than my left. And ssshhh, don’t tell anyone, but I have a 3rd nipple too. Yep! Sure do. Well, it doesn’t look like a whole nipple, it looks more like a little tiny nubbin on the underside of my breast, but yes, it leaks milk sometimes. Anyway, it’s been there since I hit puberty, and I’m sure that’s why that breast is bigger – more mammary tissue.
Totally relate to this! I lament to my husband all the time. My right is way way bigger then the left and no amount of weird feedings can change it. It’s kinda humorous. It’s so nice to hear i am not alone!
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You are hillarious, if you do go weigh your melons, please share the results!!!
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When I was nursing I had this problem. They went more or less back to normal once I weaned though.
I do know how you can weigh them (if you really want to). Get a big bowl of water, and fill it to the brim, and put it inside an even bigger bowl (the bigger bowl has no water in it). Lean over the water filled bowl, and put boob #1 into it until the bony parts of your chest hit the rim. Water will be displaced, and flow into the big bowl. Stand up and dry off. Now measure the volume of water that flowed into the big bowl. Our bodies are mostly water, so 1 liter=1kilo. Repeat the process for boob #2. Voila!
Hey at least yours might go back to normal when you stop nursing. I’m going to be stuck with lopsided boobs forever
When I got pregnant, I wondered if the breast expansion would even them out. Sadly, my already larger left boob grew even more than my right one. So I got even more lop-sided. Thankfully nobody notices when they’re in a bra and my man doesn’t seem to mind 
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Wow Sherry! I never would have thought of that. I hope you know how cool I think it is to have a scientist in the family.
Melodie´s last blog ..Lopsided Breasts
See, now that I’ve told you all about my third nipple – I think I should go blog it. I totally let that cat outta the bag!
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This is my first time reading your blog, but certainly not my last! You are hilarious. My right side always had more milk & is a little larger. Not sure which way the cause and effect relationship there works. I read somewhere about an Asian culture that wore kimono tops that easily unwrapped to reveal the left breast only & the breast cancer rate was waaay higher on their right breasts. I have been paranoid since I read that & always try to get baby to nurse on both sides as close to evenly as possible!
Haha, this totally cracked me up — I was pretty much an A- cup before my babe, and it took until my milk came in for them to plump up to a maybe B
They still seem large to me though!
Anyhow, I think my right is usually a little bigger than the left, but I have a feeling they were like that before I had Gretchen.
I keep saying I’ll continue to BF til she’s 18 if it means I can keep my boobs, haha.
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LOL! You are hysterical. I think you should weigh your boobs at the grocery store–and take pictures and post them HERE!!!
I have a preferred side at night–the right side, because I plunk my toddler in the middle of the bed when he wakes up to join us at night, so he doesn’t fall out of the bed (read: I do this with my toddler, not my itty bitty babies. Itty bitties who cobed are supposed to be on the outside of mom, or so I hear). Anyways, I can nurse from both sides without rolling over, but if he latches onto my top breast while sleeping, his teeth hurt my breast because his latch is lazy. So I prefer my bottom breast.
))
You’re not alone!
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p.s. but mine are the same size, regardless of favouring. That size? Way too big. >:(
Melissa´s last blog ..The Pencil Test
I laughed as I read your post because I do the same thing to my hubby! This, of course, makes my 5 month old nursling very jealous…she prefers my right to my left due to differences in my physical anatomy. The right one *feels* better to her mouth.
As a result, my left got uncomfortably engorged for a while and I resorted to pumping–good for making cereal with–for relief. At night, she doesn’t seem to care too much which side she gets as long as she can stay within a reasonable distance (read: boob in mouth, body pressed as close to mine as humanly possible).
I’m glad to know I’m not alone with the lopsided boobs!
Hi Melodie – Here’s the crass little ditty I mentioned to you on Twitter that I wrote a few years ago when I became lopsided with my first baby’s nursing habits. Please feel free to delete this comment if you think it’s over the top on crass-ness!
I’ve been too timid to post this on my own blog. Like you, I’ve got the Mighty Righty. So my song is an ode to Little Lefty. You sing the words to the tune of Three Blind Mice:
My left tit
My left tit
Oh what a sight
So much smaller than the right
My baby stopped nursing it months ago
It shrunk like a dick in cold water you know
Now I feel like a walking Picasso
My left tit.
Not only do they have a side they prefer, and I find easier to nurse on, but when we started cutting down on feedings around 15 months with my youngest, we just started using the left side. And I nursed for 5 more months on just one side, the other side ignored and rejected
It took over two months before my right side dried up, but eventually it got to where I only had milk on one side. And yes, it’s bigger. But, it always has been. 
mine became lopsided at first. my left breast became sore at the first few weeks and perhaps also because it was flat. it looks symmetrical now but the right still produces more milk than the other one. i just had to make them symmetrical. i don’t think i would find a bra in the market that’s cup C for the right and cup B for the left…. LOL!