Unintended Boob Job (And other mundane pregnant breast details)

Last week, I had that pesky spitz nevus removed.

They took off a nice big chunk of my chest.  Well, not THAT big.  But big enough to have a few definitely unintended side effects.

1.) I look like I have survived an ill-planned attempt to stab me through the heart.  Ill-planned because the would-be assassin stabbed me on the wrong side.  The stitches are gnarly, and healing really badly as that whole "don't lift more than 20 pounds" thing is impossible when you have two toddlers who weigh more than twenty pounds apiece.  Never mind that they just LOVE poking at your bandage and declaring, "Mommy have band-aid!  Got hurt underneath!"  And then tug at any bit of the sutures they can reach.

2.) I seem to have gotten a breast lift.

Note, that's not TWO breast lifts.  Just one.  Yeah, that's right.  My right boob is now definitely higher than the left boob.

No, I'm not going to put up an illustrative picture.  You'll just have to deal with that.

Okay, fine.

Of course, this is incredibly obnoxious.

I've been planning on getting a boob job for twelve years.  You see, I have very... ample... proportions when it comes to my upper body.  Starting when I was fifteen, my doctors began recommending that I get a breast reduction.  At that time, I was graduating into an F cup.

That was a long time ago.

I decided not to for two very important reasons.  One, I wanted to wait until I know what my "normal" was going to be.  At fifteen, with my breasts still growing and growing and growing, I worried that if I got a boob job they would simply grow back again.

The other reason was that breast reduction surgery- ANY breast surgery, for that matter- can cause all manners of complications when it comes to breast feeding.  And for my entire life I've known I wanted to have kids.  (Someday maybe I'll ask Poppa or Grandmommy to write a gust post on how he thought my preschool was brainwashing me on this topic.)  And for as long as I've considered such things, I knew I wanted to nurse them.

I also figured, selfishly, that after having and nursing several kids, I might use the excuse of a reduction to also have a bit of a REAL lift done.  Because... hey... I'm sure I could use that, right?

I imagined having the surgery once, and having it all be for naught.  Then I imagined being in my 30s, done with weaning, and with a nice pair of post-lift, post-reduction breasts- I'd look amazing!  So, I decided to wait.  I would wait until I was all done having babies, nursing babies, and weaning babies to get work done on my insanely sizable bosom.

So I waited.  And they kept growing.  I finally leveled out- hit an established size that was *my size*, and hovered there until my first pregnancy.

Allow me to share with you a blog post (from my old livejournal) from that time:

Just bought a new bra. My third new bra since my boobs have reached *truly* epic proportions.

It's a 34J. For those of you who have never conceived of such an excessive size, this is how bra sizing works:

The number is the circumference of your rib cage, BELOW the boobs, in inches. The letter is determined by measuring your boobs at the largest point to get the circumference around your body above the rib cage. Each increase in one inch relates to a step up in bra letter. Unfortunately, the bra letters are not so simple as just reciting the alphabet. Lots of double letters are standard, because after you hit about a D cup, the bigger they are the worse it really is for you. On top of that, different brands make bras differently, so frequently you might be one size in one brand but a different size in another- PARTICULARLY in larger sizes where one inch really doesn't seem to make nearly so much of a difference. Cup sizes increase in this order:

A B C D DD DDD DDDD E F FF G GG H HH I J JJ K L M MM N O OO

I have not been able to locate ANY bras- period- larger than a OO. For those of you not so quick at math, my breasts are now 16" larger around in circumference than my rib cage. I can wear this bra as a hat- and it comes down to my nose.

Oh- and my boobs keep getting bigger. They're likely to keep growing slowly all though this and the last trimester. Then when I'm ready to pop, all my milk ducts will flood with grubling juice and my boobs will swell up to an additional three sizes more. I am now expecting that when I am in need of a nursing bra, I'll be looking for a size N at least. Not to mention all the trouble I'm having trying to find a bathing suit for this summer.

They're deceptively enormous,

Lucky me, after the initial post-partum swelling, my breasts returned to that J cup.  And since weaning the girls, they shrunk down a bit more.  I've been rocking H and I cups since the girls stopped nursing.

Well, here I am again- back into those old nursing bras.

This time around, my chest has been KILLING me!  I didn't get painful and sore and miserable last time around, when I gained even more size.  But this time?  I feel like each night I get beaten across my bust with tennis rackets, or something like that.

So I have these wacky, gigantic, swollen breasts... and now one of them is about an inch higher than the other.

Go ahead and laugh.  It's pretty darn comical.  I do.  With my top off, I look like a cartoon by a hormonally charged and slightly cockeyed preteen boy.

...except also pregnant.

I don't know why M keeps acting like he thinks I'm cute.  It's absurd.

When I'm wearing a bra, I'm sure nobody can tell about my boob job.  But I know.

And now, so do you.

It'll all be worth it, in the end!

Pregnancy is glorious, isn't it?