Laurie, no offense taken here, but an observation that perhaps you see things in your area differently from others. I do not see obese women with large breasts. I see small women who should have had maybe a B to C cup carrying around breasts that hurt them. I have women who had reductions at 15 years old because they had full breasts at 10 years old and are indeed not obese or even overweight. The majority of women I see with extremely large breasts are actually rather small women and their breasts are uncomfortable to carry around. One woman I just worked with is barely a size 6 and has always been rather thin and small and her breasts embarrassed her. She was teased during her teen years and she just couldn't take it anymore so at 18 had the reduction down to just a double DD. Yes, I have seen women who are large and their breasts match their size, but they are not getting reductions. They are just large women and breastfeeding is not that hard for them either. When your belly matches your breasts it is much easier to place the baby in a comfortable way to feed. But, when your breasts are out further than your arms and you belly is nowhere near the nipples and you need to put your baby a foot out on a pillow and hope they are good at self attaching it does become more difficult. I qualify as obese and have breasts that match, but never had difficulty positioning a baby or two to feed them. If I ever do lose the weight though I can see myself wanting (though not actually doing) to collect my bosom and put it back up on my chest. Haha. I have always understood a woman's desire to have smaller breasts because of the comfort issue. My mother in law has two inch ridges in her shoulders and a back that aches daily from carrying breasts that are so dense and heavy that even at age 69 they have not lost enough density for a good mammogram reading. I wish the cosmetic industry would figure out a way to protect a woman's lactation capabilities when they are trying to give her the comfort she wants. It would be even nicer if we are a culture would leave our women's breasts the heck alone and accept them for what they are. But, I say this because the breasts I have match the body I have and I have never wanted them bigger or smaller so I try not to judge, just feel sorry that women have these feelings of inadequacy based on body parts that are capable of functioning as life giving glands that make what they look like in a sweater irrelevant. Along the theme of reduction, and Donna Ramsay's research that shows less ductal system than we assumed, why is she the first to notice this? We have been cutting up women's breasts for a very long time and I just do not understand why just now we are hearing "oops, we have less ducts than the text books say". Honestly. We cut bodies open all the time and I am not reading how we just found out we have less new arteries never heard of or maybe an artery or two less. Why after all these years of mammograms, ultrasounds, breast implants, breast reductions, breast cancer surgeries, breast cancer studies, etc. are we all of a sudden finding out that breasts have less ducts? I am not questioning the truth of this observation...which is much like the observation that no, there are not sinuses. I am saying where the heck has the entire medical community of researchers and women's health been for 30 years? You would think as often as they have been inside a breast they would have noticed how it was made. Take care, Pam MazzellaDiBosco, IBCLC, RLC Florida ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. *********************************************** Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html Mail all commands to [log in to unmask] To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or [log in to unmask]) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet or ([log in to unmask]) To reach list owners: [log in to unmask]