TMI: Post-Baby Breasts

Warning: This post contains things you may not want to know. If you are the least bit prim, proper or prude, easily offended or embarrassed, don't like to know too much personal information about anyone other than yourself and maybe not even then, think that certain subjects are completely taboo and off limits, and so on and so forth, then this post is not for you. Please turn around now, find something more bland to read, like the minutes from CSPAN and perhaps steer clear of this blog forevermore. For the rest of you, you should be ashamed of yourselves! Just kidding, sit back and relax but know you have been warned. 

Around Valentine's Day, I thought I would check out some stuff at Victoria's Secret. Now, for those of you who have kids, or simply a working brain, you know that pregnancy (and breastfeeding) irrevocably changes female bodies. (With the exception of my grandmother who swears that after her fifth child her breastfeeding ladies just stayed on for good.....a gene, dear readers, that I assure you I completely failed to inherit....if anything, mine mutated in the other direction!) So, minus certain "medical" procedures (and by medical I mean purely cosmetic) there is simply no way to fix the damage that is done to a woman's breasts post-babies. (Especially if you happen to have very little body fat because you run 16 miles when you have stomach bugs and then wonder why you look like a cross between an emaciated nine year old and something out of the National Geographic Goes Tribal edition...Sorry Kurt, didn't mean to spoil the fantasy me you have amazingly managed to hold onto all these years....seriously, the guy's a saint....you know, if saints weren't mostly celibate....and played video games in lieu of performing miracles.....)

Anyway, they just don't tell you these kinds of things in school, which is really kind of stupid because if they were to show a bunch of teenagers the before and after shots of the female body (pre- and post-pregnancy/breastfeeding), those kids would all take vows of celibacy, problem solved!

They also don't tell you about this in childbirth classes. Perhaps they think it isn't as important as the proper way to hee-hee-hee-hooooo during contractions, which I will tell you is NOT what it sounded like when the primitive me took over and gnashed its gnarly teeth and growled its deep guttural growls during labor. There was no pretty hee-hee-hee-hooing at all actually. But after all the talk of epidurals, episiotomies and placentas, I would have liked to know what to do about deflated boobs.

So, this year I thought maybe I could look into it a little. You know, try out some pretty little somethings that would both enhance them and hide them without resorting to costly invasive surgical procedures, that may or may not be dangerous to my long term health but would definitely leave me feeling a little awkward, a lot fake, way behind budget, a bit out of touch with my priorities and perhaps a wee bit totally awesome!

So one night I got online and started browsing the Victoria's Secret website and discovered that apparently they don't see the need to make busty lingerie for those of us with the tiniest of busts....it's kind of ironic, right? Like, hey, you are so small (and yet so freakishly saggy) that it's kind of an embarrassment we don't want to bother with....but see that well endowed teenie-bopper over there? Yeah, we're gonna make her look even bigger! Don't let that bra snap you on the way out!

I was discouraged to say the least. But then I remembered getting sized at Nordstrom last year so I ran up to my closet to figure out the brands of the perfectly fitting bras I remortgaged our house for bought. I was even more discouraged when I realized exactly what size they had put me in. (No, I had never bothered looking before as I was just happy they fit right so that I could escape from the dressing room in which the salesclerk, who was seemingly half my age, was watching me try on bras while assuring me she had seen worse....) Let's just say, I didn't even know they made bras that small. I am surprised they didn't send me to the pre-teen section and have me buy training bras actually. I mean, let's be honest, I have never been a busty gal but at least I had a little perky something before and could fit into a bra that didn't have to be specially made. Now a days, with 5 kids having completely drained me of any breast tissue and the running taking off the last of the remaining fat, I have like, well, nothing. No. Less than nothing. Actually, truth be told, they almost suck backwards into my chest wall as if my heart has to borrow all their mass and air to just. keep. beating..... I am surprised the doctor hasn't said anything actually. Like, "Gee Karen, where the heck did your breasts sneak off to? You actually don't have space for lumps, why bother with this check-up at all!" Matter of fact, I am thinking she only tells me to do a monthly self-check because she has to for liability reasons. After all, if a lump showed up, I'd have to move up a bra size and I think I'd notice.....

Ah, but I digress. So, there I was online, realizing I am pathetically boy like, or just pathetic, and not even Nordstrom had anything online in my size. So, I quickly went to the manufacturers website and started browsing their bras and lingerie. Only, every time I liked something, they didn't make it in my size either. So, then I wised up and did a search for my specific bra size and darn if that website didn't start a belly laugh like I have never heard before! Just hooting and hollering away. I think I even heard a knee smack. And after it was done calling all its friends over, pointing at me and making painful Dear God, It's Me Margaret jokes, it finally directed me to the right section: The Asian Bra Collection.

Dead. Serious.

Now, I am not one to make over generalized jokes about specific groups of people but how is that not hysterical?!  At first I was like, the Asian Bra Collection, really? Why would they make a collection specific for Asian women? Are they really that much different than other women? But then as luck would have it, the very next day as I was walking through the locker room at the gym I came face to face with a very slender Asian woman in the buff and I was all, "Oooooooh" and it took everything I had to contain my inner giggles and not exclaim: "Hey twinsy!" I'm sure she'd have been flattered and want to be my bosom buddy.....(snicker snicker....)

So, a few days later, after telling my friend this story she says, well Karen, why don't you just go to that place down the street (the one that caters to breast cancer survivors and mastectomy patients), I'm sure they could help you.

Gee, that's so tempting....

And so not that important!