The story of my boobs begins in high school. I was a late developer, and even then, the development was never quite as advanced as I had hoped. “I must, I must, I must increase my bust” exercises did not really do the trick, but a nice push up bra from Victoria’s Secret gave me a little cleavage.
When I was a teenager, I remember sleeping over at my aunt’s house one summer night. We were changing for bed and I caught a glimpse of her in the mirror. I remember being a little horrified. Her boobs were so small, thin and saggy — nothing at all like my newly developed Bs that sat perkily in the center of my chest. I tried not to look, but she caught my glance and knew I was slightly horrified.
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When I got pregnant with my first child as an adult, I finally had boobs — along with a huge stomach and butt, but bygones. My bra sized climbed up the alphabet and an underwire became a necessity. The ladies only got bigger when I breastfed my daughter for the first nine months of her life. As I weaned her, I went back to my old B bras.
With baby number two, I tried to not eat quite so much ice cream the second the EPT stick turned positive. I figured I had at least a month or two to show off my nice rack (my pregnancies always hit the boobs first) before the stomach caught up.
Baby number two stopped nursing around six months. I decided it was time to get my whole body back in shape after two pregnancies. I took a hiatus from carbs and hit the gym. Within a year, I was in the best shape of my life, feeling fit and at an ideal weight.
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It was time to buy some new clothes. I decided to start with undergarments and ordered several new bras from Victoria’s Secret in my normal size. I was surprised when none of them fit. I called customer service and complained. I explained to the sales representative that something was very wrong with the cut of these bras. They were all too big, and it was clear that there were some quality control issues wherever these bras were being manufactured.
It turned out that the bras were not mismarked. A trip to Nordstrom’s for a true bra sizing revealed I was no longer a size 34 B but instead measured a 36 A. Some of the bras the saleswoman brought for me to try on were double AAs! I was a middle-aged woman in a training bra!
I took a really good look in the dressing room mirror. While the face was mine, the boobs were not the ones I remembered. Actually, I did remember them — they were the boobs I saw on my aunt decades ago. But now they were attached to me. My high and perky boobs had sunk and shriveled from two pregnancies, two breastfeeding stints, significant weight loss and from just getting older. Now I didn’t need a push up bra to create cleavage — I needed it to avoid zipping my boobs in my pants.
Did my aunt’s boobs hang low? They sure did. Now mine do too, and don’t think my aunt doesn’t tease me about it. She likes to remind me of that summer night, and I have apologized from my teen ‘tude back then. I have certainly learned that what goes around comes around or, in the case of my boobs, what once was up has come way, way down.
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