Boobs, Belly and Butt

I certainly can appreciate the boobs.  Okay, I’m not sure what the rest of you endowed women do all day with the things, but I’m pleased-as-all-get-out to learn.  As a long time member of the itty-bitty titty committee, I sure don’t have much room to complain about finally getting what I’ve asked for: puberty.  But WHOA, ladies, do you find them as distracting as I do?

Not asking the menfolk, I already know they distract you.  Just try to keep your eyes on my face.  I know it’s hard. *Ahem* No pun intended.

So here’s a little TMI for you all.  Because if I’m going to write about constipation and poop, you KNOW boobs are totally something I’ve got to mention.  I started off this crazy breast adventure way back at the tender age of mumble-mumble and by graduation from college I was definitely a 34 B.

Men, this may sound like a perfectly reasonable size.  It is.  There are women who would kill to be 34 B.  A 34 B should make any petite girl happy.  Alas, it does not make long tall skinny ones with knobby knees happy.  (Speaking of knees - they were bigger than my boobs.)  Had I been six inches shorter, they would have been great boobs.  As it was I was built like a runway model and moved like a cat coming out of anesthetic.  I'm only slightly more graceful than my best friend.  We both share a disturbing amount of pride in our coffee-table bruises, but I tend to not break bones when I fall down.

Flash forward a few years of hard archaeological activity.  I gained back muscle, which was sorely needed, so that my backbone no longer stuck out further than anything else on my back (seriously, I had what I thought was permanent bruising on my back from sitting in chairs, it came as a total shock when I finally had enough padding to prevent my skin from being bruised just by sitting long hours in a class room chairs and the dark purple painful patch on my back up and went away) but that threw off my boob to chest ratio and I dropped from a 34 B to a 36 A.  THIRTY-SIX A???  Oh hells no, I’m not going BACKWARDS!  Especially since I’d invested so much in Victoria Secret over the years. I may have been particularly petite in the boob department, but they were some finely dressed boobs.  A good bra helps a girl's self confidence level enormously when she isn’t, you know, enormous.

So I stopped wearing bras for a time.  I mean, what was the point?  By then I was dating my current husband, he seemed fine with the boob situation, I was a poor student and had better things to spend my money on (beer rather than bras).   But I finally gave in and bought some cheap bras in the right size ("ish", because cheap bras fit like cheap bras and I’d gone and expanded my back muscles again) because at some point a girl has got to support the girls and I was getting chapped nipples from my shirts.

Yeah, laugh, it’s true.  And I hate chapped nipples.  It’s something I get to look forward to when I start nursing and I am *so* not looking forward to that.

Last year I took some of my hard earned cash and bought a few really really nice bras.  Elle McPherson may be a fool of a model, but her bras are magnificent.

Right, so then came pregnancy.  And BOOM cazungas! 

Oh and weeks of pain.

Because boobs don’t just grow like they did when you were young (or maybe they do, seeing how I never did really get any before, I’m not sure how they are supposed to grow).  It's not this gradual increasing in size that one stands before the mirror every day trying to figure out if they're really bigger or if you've washed your clothes at too hot a temperature... again.  This is one day, no boobs, next day, engorged mammary glands.  And glandular swelling is not pain-free.  The closest I can come to comparison is the boob pain some women suffer right before their periods.  Then there was the week I switched birth control pills and had the most amazingly sore boobs EVER where I couldn’t walk without them moving and hurting and so tip-toed to the bathroom for a week while carefully holding myself still with my hands.  I switched pills the very next month and the doctors were all “well, hell yes you should switch pills, that was just awful and we’ll make a note in your file that we will never try to put you on those every again 'cause DAMN girl, that sucks.” (Only not quite like that, because the doctor was Danish and they tend not to speak in American patois.)

So it was that pain for about a month.  I wore a sports bra to bed because them sliding off my chest when I rolled to one side was waking me up and causing me Great Sudden Pain Whilst Sleeping and I'm morally opposed to GSPWS.

Eventually they settled down.

And by settled down I mean, they completely and utterly outgrew my old bras.

I was warned that they’d keep growing (thank you ladies!) and so when we went out to purchase more maternity clothes, I picked up just a few cheap bras slightly larger than what I needed.  Also we picked up some nice nursing bras that will happily expand and expand and expand about two or three boob sizes bigger than I currently weigh in at - and “weigh in at” is the right term, these suckers have got to weigh a pound each.

So here I am at a 38 B, which doesn’t sound like much until you hold the things up next to a 36 A.  The smaller bra held my tightly clenched fist (hey, I have small hands - long fingers, but small little fists, okay?) and the larger one holds, like, my head.  YES I HAVE A SMALL HEAD ARE WE GOING TO KEEP DISCUSSING MY SMALL BITS??  And you know what?  I’m outgrowing these bras.

It’s like my boobs are watching my belly expand and are going “oh, no you don’t, Ms. Bellybutton - you think you can just wander off for a good time without us?  We’re coming with YOU!” 

I am the great expanding Northern Front and nothing can contain me!

This goes for my shirts.

Maternity shirts are great.  They give you all this room for your belly and your boobs, but they are cut awfully low in the chest.  What do pregnant women who were already well-endowed do?  I’m constantly losing things down the front of my shirts.  I have got to stop leaning over and talking to people (by whom I mean “men”) and I have got to stop looking down at myself and going “HOLY MARY MOTHER OF GOD THEY ARE HUGE!”  Because that is on the list of things one should not shout out in supermarkets.

The belly and boobs are now big enough that they meet each other half way.  Without a bra on, this is a very odd feeling, I assure you.  (This is where the large cheasted women want to whack me, because of course this is what they feel every damn day, but for the IBTC girls, it’s crazy shit.)

So I’m a little front and top heavy.  Surely I will gain some in the back to cantilever this action?  Right??

The butt has gotten a bit bigger.  After all, the 16 lbs that I’ve gained (at least, and it’s been over a week now since I’ve weighed myself, so it could be more) can’t have just gone to boobs and belly.  But the butt is still nowhere near enough padded to handle the additional weight that is now thrusting downwards.  My tailbone is Not Pleased by this turn of events.  I’m pondering getting one of those hemorrhoid rings to sit on.  My butt continually asks me Why Why Why I must constantly be on it - sitting and lying down, even lounging is always putting pressure somewhere on my toosh. So then I stand for a while and my feet start telling me to please put the backpack with the entire Oxford English Dictionary in it down, please, please, we asked nicely, what the hell are you carrying woman, this is just awful!

So here I am, lying in bed on my day off (ah, weekend, I do love you so).  My boobs are trying to hide from each other by sliding off into my armpits, my butt is crying out in horror because I’m Still Putting Pressure On It and my belly is moving in all kinds of weird ways because we’ve gone from the Quickening to the Awakening to the Alien Presence That Will Claw Its Way Out of My Gut In the Next 48 Hours (only 19 weeks to go - whaddaya mean “it’s going to get bigger”??)

If you think this means I want smaller boobs… Are you freakin’ kidding me?  They’re AWESOME!  I just need to get used to them, learn to dress them properly (they need to pick a size first and then Oh Mercy Honey, we’re going SHOPPING!!) and stop being distracted by them (heeeeeey, look at this - BOOBS!).  I could do without the pregnancy belly.  But I suppose as that is where the baby goes (intelligent design would have given us all pouches, pouches are the way we should be doing this mad reproduction thing, I guarandamntee it), I’m sort of stuck with it for a while longer.  But a bigger butt wouldn’t be amiss.  I’m sure I’d hate it once I had it, bigger butts are harder to fit into pants and stuff, especially since I have a tiny waist (under all that baby), but to be able to sit comfortably for longer than 20 minutes… oh, that just sounds heavenly!