Tits Magee

This post is about my boobs. Just a heads up, I'm going to tell you EXACTLY how it is.

Wonderful Illustration Courtesy of my lovely friend Char @ Rudooles
-the greatest card company to be born this year, check them out!

When I was first pregnant one of the first signs for me was sore boobies. Nothing major changed in how they looked to begin with,but they were tender and felt weird.

I didn't know then, but that's because they were doing the whole pregnancy growing massive boobs thing.

I've always had a, shall we say, substantial bust, but nothing compared to the situation I have now! My original baseline bra size was a 34 C/ 32D (UK size). So not tiny, but manageable on my pre pregnancy size 10 (UK size) frame. I would buy bras from Primark for £3 no problem. I could nip in, get a bra, leave and know it would 9 times out of 10 fit just fine. OH HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED.

I'll go back to the first 'pregnancy bra' shopping trip. 

So I was about 8 weeks pregnant and spilling out of my bras. I work in a special needs college with 18 teenage boys and this was not an appropriate look. Don't get me wrong I was covering up (as I always have done) but I felt I needed to address the issue of my ever expanding chest. 

So off I went to M&S. 

It was not fun. Gone were the days of sexy underwear, hell, gone were the days of an under wire!! I cried in the changing room, wondering why I was even accepting this fate. Why couldn't I wear something lovely and fun and embrace my 'fun' bouncy new boobies. Look everyone, I have biig boobies now, look look! Nope, I literally wanted to craw into a hole with my 'new' boobies and cry about them.

Eventually I pulled myself together and I tried on some 34D multipack non under wired bras, something to sleep in, and ran away. Goodbye!

My First Pregnancy Bra (how twee) if you so wish to purchase one too, can be found here. I wont post a photograph of myself in any of the bras because I darent subject you to such a sight!!

I also got some soft crop tops reminiscent of my first ever ever bras. these can be found here

So here I am thinking, I've got this, pregnancy bras, maternity bras, whatever you want to call them. I'm doing the right thing, no under wire, let all the milk come in, thats what's happening right?! 

WRONG.

A liquid called colostrum comes in while you're pregnant, usually towards the end, though I have recently heard that this can come in at any time and can leak out (oh gawd) but milk milk usually comes in something like 3 days after your baby is born, your boobs are basically just growing and growing and getting more and more sore. Your hormones increase your blood flow so theres more blood in those boobies, there is milk cells being produced and then your body is adding some fat in there because, why not, its adding fat everywhere else it seems....

Anyway, a measly three weeks later I found myself back in the fitting rooms of M&S for round 2. This time I took my friend Sarah with me and actually was measured up by a professional. Why I went back to M&S after my previous traumatic experience I don't really know, I just felt like maybe I could get another multipack and avoid spending another million pounds on underwear I didn't even like. WRONG AGAIN. Who knew there was so much you could think you know and you didnt!! I thought I knew about buying bras, I know about buying bras for non pregnant boobies, I dont know anything about pregnant boobies. Or anything to do with pregnancy actually... don't know if anyone has noticed!?

Back to the changing rooms, this woman tells me when she was pregnant she went from a B cup to an F cup or something horrendously frightening and that I was now an E cup and they were only going to get bigger so I should probably just buy one or two bras and then just come back again in a couple of weeks thank you and goodnight. 

E cup?! More growing?! So here I am little miss E cup thinking E now stands for everything-you-thought-you-knew-is-wrong and faced with buying more disgracefully unattractive bras. 

What I should have done is taken this new size information and researched pretty bras online but I didn't; I bought this and this. So they're getting a little bit more pretty, bit of trim, bit of lace, but hardly Ann Summers... 

This was all still quite early in my pregnancy and I now sit here at 25 weeks having just been to Debenhams at the weekend and got another 2 to add to my "collection" this time I took my husband- what a laugh. Poor bugger tried to get me to buy a 'Post Surgery' bra because it looked prettier that the others, it was only after I explained exactly what that meant and showed him the pockets in them that he quietened down about my choice of normal non-underwire. Though he did suggest getting one anyway and putting frozen chicken fillets in there for when it gets sore... he's trying...!

This time I tried on a 34E and it fit, just. I'm a bit braver now so I asked the girl in the fitting room if she could get me the next size up and actually, that fit much better. So, now wearing 36E. And actually, Debenhams had some really pretty non-underwired ones. Not sexy, but pretty. This is what I got.

Image from Debenhams Online
((Not me modelling I'm afraid!))

Bra shopping when you're pregnant is not like bra shopping when your non-pregnant. Well, it wasn't for me anyway. I may still invest in some pretty bras, but if I do, they will be from the internet (which means they probably wont fit and I will intend to send them back but actually just put them at the back of my underwear draw along with all the other bras that dont fit pregna-tit.)

Growing big boobies is something I did know would happen to me as a pregnant person but I didn't think it would be so complex to house them. I thought I would just buy bras and that's it. Now, some shops don't even go up to an E cup and when they do they're not the pretty little frilly numbers I'm used to, that's for sure! Alongside all this trauma of shopping my poor ladies have been so sore. My husband looks at them with such sorrow, like when a puppy (no pun intended) looks at you when it really wants something it knows it cant have. 

As well as the sore, the shopping and the sorrowful husband, there's the final 'S'- stretch marks. 

I used Bio Oil religiously at the beginning until the (mildest ever) smell made me puke and I replaced it with baby oil and I still have a few little angry stretch marks appearing on my boobs. Nothing major but I see them. Initially, I was gutted and then I came to accept that these marks will one day remind me of the day I say in M&S and cried over a bra. They will remind me that I survived the first trimester when I thought all was lost and I'm sure at some point they will remind me that pregnancy is not a drill. Its serious and your whole body is going for it all guns blazing. Good for you body, you grow those whammers and you grow them well (just a bit slower please though, I cant keep spending all this money on bras!!)