Noel Gallagher's wife, Meg Mathews, gave birth to their first child, a daughter, six days ago. Meg celebrated with champagne, Noel with a pint of Guinness. But what, you may ask, is Baby Anais' (named after the French erotic novelist, poor lamb) favourite tipple? Breast milk, or shiny tinned formula?
The question is all the more intriguing because of Mathews' well-publicised breast implants. Can you breastfeed after cosmetic enhancement? Will the baby get a mouthful of silicone along with nature's best?
Christopher Khoo, a consultant plastic surgeon at Heatherwood and Wexham Park NHS trust, says that implants should not affect a woman's ability to breastfeed. "The implants are not involved in disrupting the structure of the breast. They have nothing to do with the milk duct tissue," he says.
"Operations such as breast reduction may disrupt the ducts, although a proportion of women do manage to breastfeed because the ducts sometimes seem to be able to rejoin," says Khoo.
The main problem with implants during breastfeeding may be the discomfort of having breasts that suddenly become enormous. "During breastfeeding breasts get larger and if a woman has an implant then they will get very large." There's also the issue of drooping afterwards. "If you expand the volume of your breast by breastfeeding then the skin has to stretch to accommodate," he says. "The skin isn't that stretchy. If you blow up a balloon a little bit and let out the air then the balloon is left roughly the same size, but if you blow it up as hard as you can and let out the air the balloon is left bigger. The breast is similar."
Silicone is now regarded as safe in both the US and UK after extensive studies showed that it was unlikely that leakage caused connective tissue disease. Khoo says: "There have been over 20 papers, since the issue was raised in the US in 1992, showing silicone is safe. There was a scare about silicone found in breast milk but it is also found in the same amounts of breast milk of women without implants."
The La Leche League, which offers advice on breastfeeding, sees no reason why implants should stop anyone breastfeeding, but questions whether they are really necessary.
Nick James, consultant plastic surgeon at the Lister Hospital in Stevenage, says that there are broadly two groups of women who request implants. Women who have had children and are left with empty, saggy breasts and those in their early 20s who are flat-chested. "When you see them in the clinic they tell you they look like a man," says James. The risks of implants are fully explained: "We go through everything with them. The independent review group set up by the government in 1998 has a list of things we have to discuss with women before they have implants and it takes an hour to go through it all."
While Khoo and James see no reason why women should wait to have children before having implants, they say if a baby is imminently planned, it may make sense to delay the procedure. As James warns: "All sorts of things can happen to your breasts after pregnancy."
