I didn’t lose weight when I was breastfeeding. I gained it

“Make sure you breastfeed,” my doctor told me when I was three months pregnant. It felt less like she was getting ahead of herself and more like she was spinning off in a totally different direction.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to breastfeed – more that I’d barely had a chance to even consider it. I was more focused on getting through the first trimester of pregnancy and dealing with the debilitating pelvic pain that had brought me to the doctor’s office. The pain, she said, was “just part of pregnancy”, before adding that I’d need to manage my weight and ensure I breastfeed in order to “slim down” postpartum.

As a plus-sized person, it’s not the first time a doctor has focused on my weight in response to a seemingly unrelated issue, but it was the first time I was being told my boobs were the key to weight loss.

Breastfeeding is often promoted as a pathway to losing weight for new mothers.Credit: Getty Images

And it wasn’t the last. Not only did other doctors and nurses recommend breastfeeding to me as a method of “bouncing back”, but I discovered it’s part of many official health guidelines and the national breastfeeding strategy.

Having done a lot of work over the years to accept and love my body – and recognising that not only my body but my entire life was undergoing an enormous upheaval right now – I wasn’t particularly lured by this breastfeeding-as-weight-loss carrot-dangling.

In the end, my decision to try breastfeeding was motivated by the desire to do what was best for my baby. (Plus washing, sterilising and preparing all those bottles seemed like kind of a drag.)

Still, I was shocked when not only did I not lose weight while breastfeeding, I started to gain it. Sure, I was hungrier than I had ever been in my life, but I couldn’t understand why I was putting on weight at a time I was supposed to be shedding it like magic.

Naturally, I did what everyone does in unexpected personal situations: I searched Reddit and asked for advice on Facebook. Reassuringly, but somewhat disconcertingly, I discovered I was far from alone.

While some people did say breastfeeding helped them lose their “baby weight”, many also described holding on to or gaining weight while breastfeeding. Several agreed that breastfeeding hunger was like nothing they had ever experienced before, and others told me they only lost weight after they had stopped breastfeeding.

While there are societal pressures on women to ‘bounce back’, not all those breastfeeding lose weight. Credit: Getty Images

Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA) executive officer Victoria Marshall-Cerins says while there is “some evidence” that continuing to breastfeed may help with postpartum weight loss, it definitely doesn’t happen for everyone.

Dr Melody Jackson, a GP and international board certified lactation consultant, who runs a breastfeeding clinic, agrees that it’s different for every person.

“Many factors influence postpartum weight, including metabolism, diet, activity level and hormonal changes,” Jackson says. Those hormonal changes include (but are not limited to) prolactin, the hormone responsible for milk production, which Jackson explains can promote fat storage in some people.

“Additionally, many breastfeeding parents experience an increase in appetite, which can lead to consuming more calories than they are burning. Sleep deprivation, stress and other postpartum factors can also contribute to weight retention,” she says.

So, if breastfeeding isn’t actually a consistent method of postpartum weight loss, why is it so frequently promoted as such? And why the hell are we still focusing so much on postpartum weight loss anyway?

“It’s a retro hangover from the 1960s and 1970s,” says Dr Jennifer Hocking, who works for the ABA and is part of a University of Queensland research team focused on weight-inclusive antenatal care.

“It puts the onus back on women that they not only have to do all these things as a new mother, but they must do it all while achieving a certain ‘ideal’ weight.”

“We need to be more sophisticated in ensuring we are body positive,” adds Marshall-Cerins. “The idea that there should be no evidence in your body that you’ve had a baby – it’s unhelpful.”

Adjusting to new parenthood is hard enough without worrying about what you look like. It changes you on a cellular level, and the idea that you should somehow “bounce back” to your former self is not only ridiculous, it’s impossible.

Still, it’s one thing to know this intellectually, and another to sit in your drastically changed body, with the weight of societal expectations and your own lifetime of baggage bearing down on you.

There’s so much wonder to be had in the breastfeeding process, but that’s all the more reason to keep weight loss out of the conversation.

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