How is a nursing bra different to a normal bra?
A nursing bra has several features to ensure that it fits your body comfortably during your pregnancy, and allows you to breastfeed easily (obvs!)
Cotton lining
Through your pregnancy and also when you start nursing, your skin is going to feel pretty sensitive. The cotton sling allows your skin to breathe and stops your skin from becoming too itchy. We’ve made sure that this cotton lining covers all the seams too, to protect your poor chapped nipples (get the Vaseline ready!) You’ll notice this mostly in our Cupcake nursing bra, Cupcake underwire nursing bra & our Luna padded nursing bra.
Supportive, stretchy fabrics
You’re going to find that your breast size will fluctuate through your pregnancy and also between feeds. Our supportive, stretch fabrics allow for these changes (most importantly between feeds). After all, you don’t want to have to keep swapping to a smaller bra each time you feed, only to find you need a bigger one an hour or so later! Our Second Skin collection will offer you the most in terms of flexibility between sizes.
Because there isn’t an underwire, we’ve tried to give you as much support as possible by doubling up these layers. This leads us onto our next point…
No underwire
It’s suggested that you don’t wear an underwire until you’ve been nursing for at least 6 weeks. Underwires can cause blockages in your milk ducts which lead to an infection called mastitis. It’s super painful and makes nursing very hard for you (although your baby won’t suffer at all). To further avoid mastitis, we suggest you always get properly fitted for your nursing bras – why not visit one of our lovely stockists?
Once you’re past the 6 weeks of breastfeeding stage, however, you’re more than welcome to try wearing an underwire again – just as long as you make sure that it’s one of our super flexible styles. This will give you great support and a bit more shape in terms of cleavage. Why not try our Cupcake underwire nursing bra or Luna padded nursing bra?
Nursing clips
A nursing bra (although a bit tricky to make) is pretty easy to use. Most brands use standard plastic nursing clips that have two halves. One half is attached to the sling and strap and one is attached to the outer cup. You simply unclip the top half of the clip (attached to the cup) up and away from your body. The cup will then drop down and you’ll be able to feed your baby quickly and easily.
Inner sling
All our bras have a sling, instead of an A-frame, to offer support whilst you’re feeding. This replaces the underwire that you would normally wear and also makes sure that everything stays in the right place whilst feeding! Although some customers like an A-frame because they don’t feel quite so exposed when feeding, it doesn’t offer any support, and if badly made, can be scratchy and compress the breast tissue leading to painful mastitis. So we prefer to use a sling, no surprise there!
6 rows of hook & eye fastenings
With nearly 10 years’ experience, we know that your band measurement is going to go up and then down through your pregnancy. As your baby grows your ribcage will expand, so you’ll need more room in your bra. If you were wearing a normal bra at this stage, you would probably only have 3 or 4 rows of hook & eye fastenings so would have to buy extenders or a new bra. With our nursing bras (which you can also wear during your pregnancy) you’ll just have to move to a different row and, hey presto, you have a comfortable bra! When your baby drops (ready to be born) and again after you’ve had your baby, your ribcage will continue to shrink to around your pre-pregnancy band size and so you’ll be able to tighten the hook & eyes and wear the same bra.