Caution: May cause shrinkage

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the size of my chest. I never used to care all that much that I wasn’t well endowed, but after breastfeeding The Girl I started to care. I certainly don’t regret the fact that I breastfed her for fifteen months, in fact I’m quite proud of it. After my failure to breastfeed The Boy it felt like a minor victory to be able to feed her sans pump for so long. It may have been a tad ironic when she absolutely refused bottles for a good stretch, but we struggled through. What I didn’t realize is that by pumping for The Boy and breastfeeding The Girl my breast tissue would somehow escape from my breasts along with the milk. Nobody tells you this will happen, and physiologically I’m not entirely sure that it is possible, but where there used to be B cups there are now just sad little A cups. I used to laugh at padded bras, now they are my mainstay.

Oh I know many of you have large breasts, so large that you cannot possibly understand what I am talking about. You pee on a stick, get a positive, and two minutes later you have grown from a D cup to an F cup or some such thing. I’ve read about it happening, and read the complaints about it happening, and just nodded quietly. I don’t understand what you are going through. You bemoan the fact that you can’t find pretty bras in your size well wah, have you ever looked to see what the selection is like for us A cup gals? I got positive pregnancy tests and never once had the sore breasts you read you might have as a symptom. My breasts stayed exactly the same size until my milk came in each time. Oh, I suppose there was some rib spreading that may have affected my band size, but the cup size never flinched. Even with my milk in I wasn’t that big, a full B cup, maybe a small C cup when fully engorged. Of course when I weaned I wasn’t expecting miracles, but I was expecting to go back to my normal size. No such luck, both times I quickly deflated to A cup size, and after The Girl I had to give up on my B cup bras because they looked silly all dimpled and sad.

I realize that there are much more important things to worry about in this world, but for the first time in my life I feel like I actually want to have something done about this. After I am 100% sure we are done having kids I plan to have small implants added, under the muscle. I’m not hoping to get that large, just enough so that I am not embarrassed to wear a tight fitting t-shirt. I’d like to feel like a woman again. I suppose this makes me shallow, or vain, or some combination thereof, but I don’t care.

Several years ago T and I, and another couple were bowling at a loud club like bowling alley. I was at the lowest weight I’ve ever been, wearing a nice form fitting turtleneck sweater, and jeans. I was pretty happy about my appearance. Then something strange happened. A random guy came and sat next to me in the bowling alley lane seating (which frankly is weird in and of itself), while T was up bowling his turn. The guy leaned over and said something along the lines of “you have the smallest tits in the world.” I just gave him a death stare and got up to bowl. The guy eventually left our area and went on to bother other people. I didn’t say anything to T because I didn’t want him to cause a scene, but as we left the bowling alley I told T and the other couple we were with what the idiot had said to me. They were all livid on my behalf, and came up with oodles of good comebacks I could have used, things like “well you should know since you have the smallest penis on the planet.” We moved on and honestly it didn’t bother me that much, but now I feel like saying you ain’t seen nothing yet, because they are in fact smaller now then they were then. I still wonder if that was just the world’s worst pickup line or if the guy was just an asshole.

I don’t want you to get the mistaken impression that the idiot in the bowling alley was the precipice for this thought, because he wasn’t. T wasn’t the instigator either, I mean T certainly isn’t opposed to the idea, but you know loves me the way that I am and all. It was only recently when I read about someone else having the procedure done that I started to think more seriously about it. I need to give it more thought, do some more research, and confirm that given my family history of breast cancer (My Mom and her Mom) that it wouldn’t impede routine exams and such. Of course if my current breasts managed to get breast cancer it would be like some cruel little joke, I can’t imagine what I’d be left with after a lumpectomy.

I’ve decided that we should warn other women about the dangerous effects of breastfeeding. If formula has to have a warning label on it telling women that it is inferior to breastmilk, breastfeeding supplies and literature should have to tell women that breastfeeding could in fact cause their breasts to shrivel down a size or two. Something like Caution: Breastfeeding my cause breast shrinkage. It is only fair right? Of course I’m sure some breastfeeding advocates would slam me for saying that, just like they slam people who say that breastfeeding hurts like a mofo in the beginning even if you are doing it right (yes The Girl’s latch was ‘perfect’ and yet I still had bleeding raw nips for several weeks, having to wince through the beginning of each and every nursing session and take 600 mg of Ibuprofen every 4-6 hours to cope). We are supposed to live in bliss knowing that any sacrifice in breast size and any temporary pain is all a gift to our children. Whatever. If we ever lose our minds and have a third child I will breastfeed again, but I’m now under no illusions that it is all magical and wonderful. I’ll probably be a “nearly A” cup by the time I finished nursing another. Lactivist? Not so much.