At 1:04 in this video, the author mentions wondering if her breasts can sustain infants.
For women with small breasts, is this actually a problem? Or does nature usually rise to the challenge, regardless of the cards you’re dealt (so to speak)?
I’m particularly concerned about the Asian woman in the video. Holy crap! She looks like she just completely skipped adolescence!
Breast tissue extends up into the armpit and almost to the collarbone. It’s not the size of the breasts, but how much glandular tissue they have and how productive it is. Plus, that’s why mammals have twice as many breasts as the average litter size.
Was dating a Asian woman as you describe who did successfully breastfeed her child, so it didn’t seem to pose a issue for her.
I remember reading somewhere that the big human female breasts are not better (infact an hindrance) for feeding babies. (It was surmised that human females evolved bigger breasts only to attract men).
As proof, it was said that Chimp and Gorilla females had smaller breasts but produced more milk.
Size doesn’t matter.
As alternative means for feeding human babies are fairly recent, if nature didn’t rise to the challenge, guess what would have happened?
Not something to worry about today, though.
Boobs are just bling. They’re flashy, not functional. Most animals don’t have hooters at all, and they do fine.
Martian Bigfoot:
Owls would be quite lost without theirs, though.
It’s working.
My sister the relatively flat-chested La Leche hotline volunteer says that it’s not an issue, and that breast size is almost unrelated to milk production. What I have been able to Google tends to back her up.
Regards,
Shodan
My daughter’s an A cup, and she’s successfully nursing her second baby.
My ex was a triple G or some other ridiculous size and could not produce enough to nurse. Just another data point.
I’ve seen thin, scrawny, under-age cat-mothers nurse to the point of passion her enthusiastic litter, so see no reason mere humans would be left unsatisfied.
My theory is that female humans would have attracted male humans somehow even without large breasts. Just a guess here.
My wife is Asian, we now live in Taiwan and lived in Japan when she was nursing our two children.
She started off as a B cup, but while she was nursing her breasts did enlarge. Ironically, the final size was smaller than before.
Japanese women tend to have smaller breasts. A sizable percentage (no pun intended), something like 20 to 30% of them are A cup.
Nothing to do with the size of the breasts - it’s the nipples that matter. My wife was 30 years a nursery nurse working with premature babies and their mothers. She assures me that big boobs just get in the way, and small ones are a lot easier for baby. The big problem is inverted nipples.
My sister was a non-cup when she got pregnant and almost an A-cup when she gave birth. She easily breastfed for 2.5 years.
My other sister was an A-cup when she got pregnant and a B-cup when she gave birth. She easily breastfed for 6 months.
I have never had a baby. I have massive boobs. I also have inverted nipples (which my sisters do not have). My Gyn has already told me that it’s highly likely that I will have a bitch of a time breastfeeding if I ever do have a baby. But, she didn’t relate it to the size at all, just to the nipples.
There are exercises you can do to get those nips to pop up. I think it’s best to get your husbands help. He may even enjoy it:)
I have very small breasts. They don’t even hardly stick up when I’m lying down.
When my son was born, I nursed him for about the first four months, and then he lost a pound, and my pediatrician told me to switch to formula. This in spite of the fact that I was drinking huge amounts of milk myself. (Had to eat M&Ms to bring on the cold-milk-lust. Worked for me. 
)
It may be that it’s more about the size/number/state of your mammary glands than it is the fatty tissue that constitutes the bulk of the boob. But I couldn’t help feeling like, if I had bigger breasts, it wouldn’t have been a problem.
On the upside, though, I’m well over forty, and my breasts are in the same latitude that they always were.
Big breasts don’t have more mammary glandular tissue, they have more fat.
Yup guys, that’s what you’re jonesing for, big lobes of fat.
Most small breasted women’s breast get considerably bigger when they’re breast-feeding.
Other than humans, mammal female breasts are normally small, barely larger than males, except when feeding the young. As mentioned above, human boobs are about attracting sex. The common story is that they resemble nice plump ass cheeks, and are favored because we stand upright. Or something like that.
Obesity is a risk factor for lactation difficulties, and most of us with natural “ridiculous size” breasts are obese. There are a lot of reasons why obesity can make breastfeeding more of a challenge, from an increased risk of c-section and an incision that can make breastfeeding painful to a wonky hormonal milieu because fat tissue makes hormones, some of which may interfere with milk production. So too big breasts (on an obese woman) actually make me watch her more closely for problems than too small breasts.
There is a pathological level of “smallness” called Tubular (or tuberous) hypoplastic breasts that does impede breast feeding. With this condition, there actually is a lack of sufficient milk making tissue that can make breastfeeding difficult and, rarely, impossible. Many women with tubular breasts need to supplement with formula, but can still breastfeed to meet some of the baby’s requirements.
But I wouldn’t describe tubular breasts as just small breasts. They are kind of flat and skinny, set far apart and with areolas and nipples which seem swollen and/or bulbous. They’re not just small breasts, but actually malformed breasts.
Speaking of Asian women and their capability to breastfeed, I recall this story from 2008 about a Chinese policewomen who breastfed at one point 9 babies who were orphaned/separated from their mothers in an earthquake.