Will pregnancy ruin breast implants

Breast implants are a major commitment towards a new you – attaining a more desirable breast shape, size, countering the impact of ageing or weight loss, and generally moving towards a more desirable body shape. They require you to commit time, monetary resources, lifestyle changes associated with any surgical procedure and of course adjusting to life after a surgery. If you are a young woman who has not yet had a baby, it is natural for you to ask – will pregnancy ruin breast implants?

The answer to this question is NO.

What does pregnancy do to your body?

Pregnancy changes your body in a great many ways, and that includes the breasts. During pregnancy, your breasts gain volume, leading to a bigger breast size. Once the pregnancy runs its course, changes to the breasts happen on account of weight loss and breastfeeding. This may lead to increased sagginess and/or loss of size along with loss of shape.

Thus, pregnancy may be accompanied by unwanted changes to your breasts.

Why is there no implant to breast implants?

There are two facets to understand here.

1. Breast augmentation can be done in two ways – fat grafts and breast implants. Fat grafts are done by taking out excess or unwanted fat from other parts of your body and basically using them as natural implants on your breasts. These can be impacted when the breasts change shape after pregnancy. On the other hand, what are formally known as breast implants are artificial implants made out of silicone gel.
2. Silicone gel itself has several properties which make it resilient and impervious to change/damage, except those associated with wearing out with time and age.
   • Silicone gel is pliable, and gel-based implants take whatever shape you want them to. Therefore, when the breasts change their shape because of pregnancy and post-pregnancy body changes, the implants themselves merely adapt themselves to fit the mould. While this may impact the way the breasts look externally, the implants themselves are left unaltered. You may need a follow-up consultation and or/surgery to fix that, without the implants getting damaged.
   • Silicone gel has low thermal and chemical reactivity, which is why they are resistant to any chemical changes which may happen inside your body. As a result, they are not impacted by any changes to your body on account of pregnancy.

These very properties make silicone gel the right candidate for manufacturing breast implants, and these very properties help answer the question: will pregnancy ruin breast implants? The answer is no, physically there is no impact on the breast implants themselves on account of pregnancy. What may be affected is the right fit of those implants on your body, which may be impacted by changes to the breast as a direct or indirect consequence of pregnancy. This may require you to either get a new set of implants or adjust the existing implants to better mould to your body.

And of course, you must always remember, whether pregnant or not, breast implants made from silicone gel are not everlasting. Like any other thing, they run their course and outlive their usefulness. At this stage, you will need to get a new set of implants to replace the old ones.