How to make a regular bra into a nursing bra

Have you had dif­fi­culty find­ing a nurs­ing bra that fits or that fits into your bud­get?

Here is a guest post from Janda, a friend of mine who is a seam­stress.  After being frus­trated with not find­ing a sin­gle nurs­ing bra that fit me well (I went through dozens and not all were return­able), I asked her to con­vert my old Victoria’s Secret Body by Vic­to­ria bras into nurs­ing bras.They fit much bet­ter and were much more sup­port­ive than any nurs­ing bra I’d tried by far.  I’m lucky that a year after giv­ing birth (that is, a year into nurs­ing), my breast size had sta­bi­lized, in fact, I was back to my pre-pregnancy size and could save money using my old bras.

This con­ver­sion will work on new bras as well, if you’re a new size and can’t find a well-fitting nurs­ing bra, or have found a reg­u­lar bra that fits well and is much cheaper than a nurs­ing bra. Just make sure you have a well-fitting bra, wear­ing a bra that does not fit well could lead to mas­ti­tis or clogged ducts.  If using an under­wire bra, please be sure that the under­wire does not ever sit on the breast.  You should also wait until your size sta­bi­lizes (if it ever does) to wear under­wire bras while breast­feed­ing.  In gen­eral, I wouldn’t really rec­om­mend them before 6 months post-partem, but you know your­self best.  For help with under­stand­ing bra fit, I rec­om­mend BraStopShop’s Bra Fit­ting Guide: The Per­fect Fit Video or The Do-It-Yourself Bra Fit­ting Guide on Knick­ers Blog.

Click­ing on any of the pho­tos will give you an enlarged view. Now here’s Janda to explain how you can save money by con­vert­ing a reg­u­lar bra into a nurs­ing bra:

Con­vert­ing a nor­mal bra to nurs­ing bra!

Notes: If you plan to change your nor­mal bra to a nurs­ing bra, make sure you have a good fit. Make sure the bra sits com­fort­ably around your ribs and over your shoul­ders. The bra should not dig in any­where, espe­cially under your arms or under your breasts. If you want to use a bra with wires, make sure the wires sit com­fort­ably over your ribs and do not ride up on your breast. This is very impor­tant. There is no con­crete proof that you should not wear a wired bra whilst breast­feed­ing, but an ill-fitting wired bra could cause a lot of dis­com­fort. Wired could actu­ally be more com­fort­able if it sits the way it should and if you are used to wear­ing one.

You will need:

• A nor­mal bra with space on the shoul­der straps to extend the length at least 2cm. The strap could get slightly shorter as you are cut­ting it and fold­ing it over.
• 2 large hooks and eyes, as close as pos­si­ble to the same width of the bra strap. There are metal ones on the mar­ket that works great. If you can find plas­tic ones, great! (Note from Christina: I found a great site that sells plas­tic nurs­ing bra clasps, Sew Sassy Fab­rics. They come in white, black and clear and the com­pany ships world­wide. I already pur­chased a bunch in prepa­ra­tion for con­vert­ing reg­u­lar bras to nurs­ing bras after I give birth in June 2010.)
• Match­ing cot­ton thread.
• A long, thin sewing nee­dle.
• About 2x 30cm of satin rib­bon, match­ing the bra in colour but also match­ing the width of the bra strap. If you can­not find any, make the rib­bon from a piece of match­ing fab­ric. Make sure you get some­thing soft and thin. Satin is smooth against the skin and does not rub.  Here’s how to make the ribbon:

1. Cut 2 strips of fab­ric 3x the width of the bra shoul­der strap and about 30 cm long. If you can, cut on the bias — this allows a lit­tle more “movement”
2. Fold each in half along the length of the strip.
3. Sew along the raw edge, cre­at­ing a “tube”. You should be able to push the bra strap into the tube if it is a elas­tic strap, not too loosely… (an indi­ca­tion that you have the cor­rect width)
4. Turn the tubes inside out by attach­ing a safety pin to the end of one layer of your tube and push the safety pin “blind” through the tube till it comes out on the other side.
5. Iron the tube flat.
6. If you do use this method with a flat elas­tic bra strap, you could fol­low first method — using “tube”- like straps.

You could also use some beads to sew a lit­tle chain (about 3cm long) to the hook on both sides. Put the chain on the out­side (on top) of the strap when you refas­ten to remind you which breast you last fed from. Make sure you use a triple thread at least, so the chain doesn’t break easily.

How to make the conversion:

Cut the bra strap off just above the joint of the cup (front) and the strap, about 1cm away from the cup. If there is some stitch­ing that you can eas­ily undo, do that instead, using a seam ripper.

If the strap is “like a tube” when you press it from the sides:  (method 1)

1. Try to push about 5mm of the strap into the tube — hid­ing the raw edge.
2. Push the end of a rib­bon into the tube and sew securely in place. If you can, you could also hide the loop’s “back end” inside the tube. Be sure to sew in place very securely with small stitches



3. Sew the eye of the hook and eye to the joint in the shoul­der strap, so the eye is towards the attachment.
4. Push the raw edge of the cup-end of the shoul­der strap 5mm into the “tube” com­ing from the cup, sew in place.
5. Sew the hook securely to the cup-end of the strap, mak­ing sure the hook faces up and towards the body.
6. Hook the hook into the eye. You could pin the rib­bon to the cup just below the hook, just to keep it in place for a bit.
7. Turn the cup inside out and stretch over your knee or some­thing round to take the form it would when you are wear­ing it.
8. Pull the loose end of the rib­bon loosely towards the bot­tom of the cup. About a 1/4th of the way from the “under­arm posi­tion. This exten­sion to the strap will help keep the bra’s shoul­der strap over your shoul­der whilst feeding.
9. Attach the rib­bon securely to the seam or elas­tic pass­ing under the bust. Trim off excess rib­bon and fin­ish neatly.
10. Fol­low the same steps with the other side.

If you just have a flat elas­tic shoul­der strap:  (method 2)

1. Put the end of the rib­bon on the end of the shoul­der strap, with the rib­bon on the “nice side” of the strap. Let the rib­bon over­lap about 2cm. Sew the rib­bon to the strap about 1 cm from the raw edge of the shoul­der strap.
2. Fold the over­lap­ping rib­bon 5mm to the inside. Then fold it again over the raw edge of the bra strap. You want it to form a lit­tle pouch for the edge of the elas­tic. Sew in place with small stitches.
3. You could also make a sim­i­lar “cover” for the cup-end of the strap.
4. Sew the hook securely to the cup-end of the strap, mak­ing sure the hook faces up and towards the body.
5. Hook the hook into the eye. You could pin the rib­bon to the cup just below the hook.
6. Turn the cup inside out and stretch over your knee or some­thing round to take the form it would when you are wear­ing it.



7. Pull the loose end of the rib­bon loosely towards the bot­tom of the cup. About a 1/4th of the way from the “under­arm posi­tion. This exten­sion to the strap will help keep the bra’s shoul­der strap over your shoul­der whilst feeding.
8. Attach the rib­bon securely to the seam or elas­tic pass­ing under the bust. Trim off excess rib­bon and fin­ish neatly.
9. Fol­low the same steps with the other side.

Visit this month’s other Car­ni­val of Breast­feed­ing participants:

• Motherwear’s Breast­feed­ing Blog gives home reme­dies for com­mon breast­feed­ing prob­lems — many of which you’ll find in your kitchen
• Hobo Mama lists money sav­ing ideas for the budget-conscious nurs­ing mother
• Milk Act blogs about how breast­feed­ing taught her to live a more fru­gal life
• Black­tat­ing pro­vides links to breastfeeding-related DIY projects
• Breastfeeding123 gives a recipe for mak­ing Pedi­alyte alter­na­tive at home
• Zen­Mommy dis­cusses how nurs­ing has saved her money
• Breast­feed­ing Mums shares money-saving alter­na­tive uses for breastmilk

You may also be interested in reading:

• Victoria's Secret has nursing bras (18)
• Too wide waistbands? Make them fit! (4)
• Review: Nursing Bras (7)
• Monsters, Monsters, Everywhere! (1)
• Thoughts on Parenting (2)

Tagged as: bra conversion, bra fit, Bras, brassiere, brassiere designs, Breastfeeding, breastfeeding bra, DIY, Hacks, nursing bras