Breastfeeding: What happens when your baby favours one breast over the other?

The new mother has been documenting her journey navigating the intricacies of motherhood on social media revealing the not-so-fun parts of it all.

Disproportionate breasts

In a post that has since gone viral, the mother-of-one shared with her millions of followers the effect her body has had after only using one breast to feed her baby. She explains that although she knows to alternate breasts when feeding, her child showed a bizarre affinity for only one of her boobs—the right one. To not disturb the feeding process, she decided to only use that one breast to feed her baby.

As a result, the social media influencer, shows the disproportionate size of one of her breasts. The right one being completely swollen—presumably producing more milk as a response to the feeding—while the left one, as she describes 'appears to be gone.'

Why does this happen?

After a woman gives birth, lactation is a natural occurrence that is hormone-activated to signal the mammary glands in your body to start producing milk to feed the baby.

When only one breast is being used to pump out milk the body's response is to automatically compensate and produce as much milk as possible from that one same breast—as it assumes the other one is 'out of service.'

As a result and as seen in Abbie Herbert's case, the one breast that is being used grows much larger in size while the other one remains the same.