6 months post and they STILL feel hard and sit high. Everyone promised drop and fluff. Is this capsular contracture?

#1meglifts(Joined Apr 2026 · 3 posts)July 1, 2026, 8:14 pm

Right, second time I've turned up here in a mild panic, you'd think I'd have learned. Surgery was mid January, 320cc, dual plane, partly under the muscle. By every timeline I've read I should be softening off and doing the whole "drop and fluff" thing by now. I'm nearly six months out.

They are NOT dropping. Or fluffing. They still sit high and proud, more shelf than teardrop, and when I press on them they feel firm, actual resistance, not the soft squish everyone bangs on about. The left one especially, it's the side that does everything late apparently. My natural tissue was always tight (I lift, low body fat, the surgeon literally called my skin envelope "snug"), so part of me thinks maybe that's just me. The other part went down a 2am rabbit hole and now every result I scroll past says capsular contracture and I've decided the scar tissue is quietly squeezing them into cricket balls.

So a few things. At six months are they honestly still allowed to be this firm and this high? When does the softening actually happen, is there a point where you go ok, that's the final shape now? And the big scary one: how do you tell normal firm from the BAD firm, because to me firm is firm and I genuinely can't tell the difference from a forum post. Review is booked but not for a few weeks and I need to know whether to bump it.

#2Natalie88(Joined Nov 2024 · 26 posts)July 2, 2026, 8:47 am

The phrase "drop and fluff" makes it sound like a scheduled event and it really isn't, it's a slow slide, and under the muscle with tight tissue it's the slow end of slow.

Here's how mine got explained to me. When they go in, the muscle is tight and unhappy and clamps down over the top, and your skin hasn't stretched to the new volume yet, so everything sits high and packed. Over the weeks the muscle relaxes and the lower skin stretches, and the implant sinks into the lower half of the breast while the top softens off. That downward sink is the "drop", the lower half filling out is the "fluff". On a soft, roomy chest it can happen quite fast. On someone athletic with a snug envelope and the implant under the muscle, it's the tortoise version.

Mine were rock solid and shelf shaped at three months and I was writing posts exactly like this one. They carried on changing until nearly month six or seven. The two sides settling at different speeds is so common it's almost a rule, one is always the slow kid. I wouldn't read your left side as anything sinister just for being behind.

#3sixweekspost(Joined Feb 2025 · 11 posts)July 2, 2026, 12:33 pm

Same club. Mine felt like I'd swallowed two door knobs at three months and I fully believed I'd been handed contracture as a parting gift. They softened, slowly, boringly, exactly like Natalie says.

One thing worth flagging because it wound me up for weeks: someone at my gym told me that if they haven't dropped by six WEEKS they never will, and that you have to massage them hard or they seize up. Total nonsense on both counts as far as my own surgeon was concerned, and she went slightly pale at the "massage them hard" part. Whatever you end up doing about massage, take it from the person who actually operated on you, not the changing room.

#4Jade R.(Joined Mar 2025 · 18 posts)July 3, 2026, 7:05 pm

Nearly ten months out here so I can give you the long view. At six months mine still felt firmer than I'd expected, and I remember being quietly disappointed they didn't feel "natural" the way all the marketing implies. Give it more time. Somewhere around month eight they crossed a line, and now they genuinely feel soft and like part of me, I forget they're there most days. The firmness across the upper part was the very last thing to go.

I won't pretend everyone lands in the same place, and if yours were getting harder rather than softer month on month I'd be saying something different. But firm and slowly improving at six months was exactly my story, and it had a boring, happy ending.

#5Miss Charlotte VaneSurgical moderator(Joined Sep 2024 · 58 posts)July 5, 2026, 11:20 am

meglifts said:

how do you tell normal firm from the BAD firm

The short version first: firmness and a high position at six months, after a submuscular or dual plane placement in someone with tight, athletic tissue, is much more often the tail end of normal settling than it is capsular contracture. What matters is the direction of travel, and the members above have described it well.

A little detail on why. With the implant partly under the pectoral muscle, the muscle and a snug skin envelope hold it high early on, and the softening and descent (the "drop and fluff") happen as both stretch and relax. On a loose, roomy chest that can be largely done by 3 months. On a lean, tight, muscular one it commonly runs to 6 months and can keep improving out to 6 to 12 months, with the upper pole firmness the last thing to resolve and the two sides rarely keeping the same schedule. So "still firm and high at six months" sits inside the normal range for your particular starting point.

Capsular contracture is a different pattern, not just a firmer version of the same one. Every implant forms a capsule of scar tissue around it, that part is normal and expected; contracture is when that capsule tightens and contracts. Surgeons grade it on the Baker scale, I to IV: grade I is soft and looks normal, II is a little firm but still looks normal, III is firm and starts to look abnormal (rounder, riding higher, distorted), and IV adds tenderness or pain. The useful distinction for you is direction and time: normal settling gets softer and sits lower as the months pass, whereas contracture tends to get firmer, rounder and higher over time, sometimes with an ache, and it more typically declares itself months to years out rather than resolving. Reported rates vary a lot with implant and technique, but it sits in the region of the low tens of a percent over the life of the implants and is one of the more common reasons people need revision surgery. The site's guide to capsular contracture sets out the grades and the warning signs, and the piece on whether implants feel natural covers this softening timeline and why the early months mislead.

On the massage question that came up: some surgeons ask patients with smooth, round implants to do displacement exercises, others don't, and for certain textured or shaped implants massage is specifically not advised. The evidence that any massage prevents contracture is limited and mixed, so this is genuinely a follow your own surgeon's instruction situation rather than a forum one. The "hasn't dropped by six weeks so it never will" line is simply wrong; six weeks is early days.

Where I'd stop reassuring and pick up the phone: a breast that is getting firmer rather than softer week on week, one that is visibly riding higher or looking rounder and more distorted over time, new pain, or any sudden change, redness or warmth on one side. None of that is something a forum can grade, only an examination can, so if the picture shifts before your review, ring your surgeon's team and move the appointment up. From what you've described, steady and slowly softening, the plan of keeping your booked review sounds right.

#6meglifts(Joined Apr 2026 · 3 posts)July 18, 2026, 6:40 pm

Update for anyone who finds this at 2am like I did. I didn't bump the review in the end, and at the appointment the surgeon pressed around, watched me tense the muscle, and said the same thing you all did: normal, tight envelope, under the muscle, slow settler, left side lagging, nothing that looked or felt like a tightening capsule. She reckoned I've got a good few months of softening left in me.

And honestly, since I stopped pressing on them forty times a day and comparing them to strangers online, I think I can feel the left one starting to give a bit. Or I've talked myself into it. Either way, filing this under "the mirror and my thumbs are unreliable narrators" and setting a reminder for month nine.