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10/08/2004
Three more observations about my breasts
I don't look unquestionably pregnant when I'm clothed, thanks largely to my uncompromising foundation garment. Because of its unparallelled engineering, my breasts still appear to defy gravity, protruding much farther than my abdomen. I look dumpy, not pregnant, and my majestic prow precedes the rest of me into a room by an average of forty-five seconds.
I was cupping my breasts (or as much as would fit) in my hands the other day, feeling their heft and the strange texture of the stretch marks that now marble my skin. "My breasts," I called to Paul, who was in the shower, "will never be the same again."
"It's okay," he called. "They'll still be attached to you."
The books all say you should expect your breasts to change during pregnancy. They will increase in size, of course, possibly creating stretch marks. Most likely your nipples and areolae will grow and darken as the weeks pass, making themselves a more obvious target for a hungry near-blind newborn.
Mine have done all of the above. Although I knew they would, I wasn't entirely prepared for how dramatic the changes would be. These are not my breasts — because someone would ask — but they are a fairly accurate representation of the before and after of my formidable rack.
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ok, the 'after' was scary. and if you think you're having fun now, get back to us when those mysterious wet spots start showing up on the front of your shirts!
Your prowess with graphics is pee-in-your-pants brilliant.
My nips looked like two angry, dying suns hurtling through space when I was pregnant the first time. Huge, red stretch marks, all flowing away from the areolae. Walking freak show, is all I'm sayin'. That, and all hail Wacoal!
That was a nice comment Paul made. 2 points Paul!
Oh, and great boobs (before and after)!
That was the sweetest thing for Paul to say. He sounds like a wonderful husband. Body changes are hard, even when they are expected. My body changed not from preg. but from a gastric bypass. I went from 326 to 140ish and a size DD to an A and they sag!@! I still struggle with the changes my body has gone thru' and to think I asked for it....... at least at the end of your change there will (hopefully with fingers crossed for you) be a happy healthy baby.
I really like the point at which your boobs can help balance a plate on your belly while standing up.
My Sister in Law referred to hers simply as "the orbs".
Ahhhahhhahhhhaaaaa!
I love you I really do.
Hope you are ok.
Paul knows just the right thing to say to a pregnant woman with huge, dimpled psychodelic breasts.
Oh, and thanks for teaching me the plural of the word areola. All these years I've been calling them areolas.
Okay, gotta go check on the raviolae.
Well, my husband wants to give me a new name: a porn star name. And all my patients gingerly ask if I've had a boob job; very few ask if I'm pregnant . My giant boobs also obscure any sight of my expanding uterus. Apparently though they get bigger postpartum...... it's truly unimaginable. What amazes me is that none of my patients have noticed that I've gained 25 lbs... I'm 5 foot 2 , I can't believe they don't notice. Instead I get: "Did you cut your hair?" ?!?
My older sister (3 kids) was toppless in front of her then 6 year old son one day. He looked at boobs, laughed, and said "mommy, you have bent boobies!"
I was always afraid of smothering Xavier when he was so little that my boobs were bigger then his head. Then there's Cyn, who almost smothered herself....
I already have big boobs and I am not even close to being preggers. Holy hell! Do they make bras in "bigger than yo' baby" sizes?
oooooooooooo free porn!
Nice Rack, Babe.
And I agree.. 2 points for Paul. 2 very large, round, sore, protruding points.
Uhhhh... is it okay if I eat at the neighbour's instead? Mom's seems a little too... animated.
Oh my god Julie. That was laugh-out-loud, thank-goodness-I-wasn't-eating-or-drinking-anything, I-about-peed-my-pants FUNNY!!!!!!!!!!!!
So was I the only one who didn't know stretch marks are three-dimensional until I had some of my own?
Anyone else? Anyone?
OMG!! Gotta say they looked damn good "before". "After"?? Kinda like boobs on acid!
BAAAAA HAAAA!!! Thanks for the laugh! :)
I used to have great breasts, more than a handful, perky, with nicely placed nipples. After a son and then the twins they are still great.. then droop a bit more, the nipples no longer shoot to the sky, they seem perpetually lined with deep purple veins and they have a few stretch marks but what the hell. They fed my kidlets.. Sappy? Maybe. The only one who has to see them in all their glory is the bastard that had everything to do with their change ;)
I know you feel empowered by information. This is good in every regard but two. Don't ask what will happen to your breasts after...THE FALL.
Don't ask and we won't tell. It's better that way.
You WISH your rack looked like that before!!!
The good news is, the areolae go back to their old color a couple weeks postpartum. And apparently (I wouldn't know yet) they decrease in size and get firmer again after you wean. And yeah, you love them because your kid(s) love them. ;)
While at 18.5 weeks my breasts have been behaving, so far, any outward sign of pregnancy is obscured by something else: an upper ab flab roll. It was there pre-pregnancy, but nothing like this and I've only gained 4 lbs. I've actually had people (who know I'm pregnant) pat my flab roll and squeal "oooo look at your belly!" Ok folks, baby is just now at belly button level, get your hands off my flab. I think my body is doing this wrong- expanding my flab instead of my boobs. I want a psychedelic rack like Julie's.
We were advised at a recent Child Birthing class that the areolas would enlarge and darken, just as you said, to give the baby a target.
Now since I am as close to as albino as one can be without being albino, my husband and I both agreed we would have to buy some blue fingerpaint to give the baby something to focus on. The "Darkening" (sounds like something out of Tolkien) has not occured.
I'd pay good money to have the flashy "after" boobs!
I am still mourning the loss of my youthful, elegant, dewey breasts. It wasn't the pregnancy that did it, it was the the breastfeeding. I started out with small breasts that ballooned into larger ones. But you know what balloons look like after they've lost all their air? Deflated, wrinkled and sad—a post party reminder that ya throw in the trash...
Yeah, those sad limp balloons are now my breasts.
Nice before shot, how convenient that you had that hanging around to photoshop! hee hee.
My stretchmarks showed up vertically, on my ass. Anyway, your breasts may not "tighten up" afterwards. Depends how long you nurse for. All I can say is 2 years of nursing caused a serious droop. Thank g-d for underwire.
That is the nicest thing I have ever heard someone say. *hugs*
Yeah and I hear they get all saggy after you finish BF'ing. My best friend said she pretty much just rolls each one up and sticks 'em in her bra.
-AmyY
You know, my breasts have never been as perky as your "before" picture. You can imagine what breastfeeding has done to them! I'm not looking forward to weaning and examining the remains of what used to be a full, if not "attentive" breasts.
You forgot the 'between' part, while you're breastfeeding. I was searching for "XXX" cup (kidding) bras at 5 mos., when my daughter was born, it was okay; for about a day, then I needed the "over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders".....not only huge, but if she didn't eat on time, "Oh.My.God.They.Are.Hard.As.Rocks"...
My husband loved that period of time, but I was tired of packing the extra 20 pounds, *10 per boob*....Hang in there.
You have made me afraid. Very afraid. I've already got a set of twins - not just peaks, but Mt. Saint Helens(es) - I could just cry hearing all this.
Hope my Brad turns out to be a Paul!
ROFL!!! Wait till your milk comes in!!! Omg .. Have you ever heard the joke about the woman who was granted the wish of having bigger boobs, and the genie told her that every time someone said pardon around her (like dolly pardon) that her boobs would get bigger. Well she bumbed in to a Chinese man accidently and he looked at her and said "A thousand pardons!". The next day the title of the newspaper ad read "Man killed by two torpedos!" That's how I felt when my milk came in. They needed their own zipcode.
I love the boob shots. My own have not been perky for some time, as they inflate and deflate every cycle, like clockwork. I could tell time by whether they're a C or a D cup. I remember back when I was on the pill and they were one size, all the time. Those were the days.
On another note, as a place for healthy venting, I just started my own blog at http://babymaker.blogspot.com/. Stop on by!
The graphics are hysterical! Thank you for the laugh. Oh, and I went back to the other post describing the changing landscape of your rack, and that had me laughing out loud. Brilliant.
Heidi
Congrats... your blog is now my favorite on the web... I frequent Cheryl's... www.thedoctorswife.net
and Khara's
www.geekyprincess.com
My husband and I are ttc, so far, to no life-changing avail.
Hang in there,
Ellén
heehee. the after scared me at first!
My DD boobs were saggy and had stretch marks before I ever got pregnant (I chalk it up to the freshman 15; they were nice firm C's before that!). One thing I like about being pregnant (32 weeks now) is that I can go around my house braless and you can hardly tell--because my pregnant belly prevents them from sagging as much as they do in normal life. (I don't recommend doing a lot in this state, as some support is still good for anything that requires a lot of movement, but when the underwires start to chafe, it's nice to be able to whip the bra off, and STILL feel that it would be okay to answer the front door.)
BUT more importantly, my breasts actually got BETTER after breastfeeding, and I hope they do it again. They got smaller, and they got firmer. Oh sure, they still sag and they still have faint stretch marks, but they are better than before, for SURE. (Well, they were before I got pregnant again.) I suspect that part of it is just my APPRECIATION for them--all those years of lugging around DDs, and finally they were useful for something (my husband's interest in them is not particularly useful to ME, unfortunately....). Anyway, I hope it will be that way for you as well!
And one last thing, on the increase in areola size. Did you go from Ritz bits to Oreo, or perhaps from Oreo to Chips Ahoy? I think I'm still expanding on up to jumbo Mrs. Fields......I always had to laugh when I put the breastfeeding pads in my bra, because although they LOOK kind of appropriately breast-sized, they barely covered my areola. When you're big, you have to watch for migration, or they won't soak up a thing!!
Best wishes!
Juenique bras. I highly recommend them. They give you that bullet-breasted 50's pinup star look. Don't buy one until after the baby comes, though, because your breasts might *sigh* grow another couple cup sizes.
Heh, I remember writing quite extensively in my blog about the changes my tits have made while I was pregnant. In fact I posted some shit about them agan today. And now, postpartum they have changed even more drastically. You'll learn to love em.
Damn. Every time this topic comes up I comment hoping for someone to say "oh...me too.." but they never do! My boobs do no growing while I'm pregnant. They just continue to look smaller as my belly gets bigger. I'm a (very) modest b-cup who only became a full b-cup when nursing. I feel ripped off. Especially because mine never got the psychedelic lights and sign to market my goods to the baby- I think she'd have been a better eater...
I had a baby earlier this year and was MORTIFIED to discover one day, prior to my sons birth, a small piece of nipple hanging off. When you look closely at your nipple you see that there are tiny mountains and valleys. Well, periodically through the course of my pregnancy, a mountain would come loose, fall off, and the valley would grow. I cried the first day i witnessed this horror. When he was born I did not breast feed him due to a reduction I had many years ago where my milk ducts were severed. The inability to nurse was probably a good thing because the nipple would definitely fit through a toilet paper tube and could have been a choking hazard. I hope this does not happen to you but just wanted to warn you in the event it does. I was thoroughly pissed off that no one had told me about this phenomenon before it happened.
I had a baby earlier this year and was MORTIFIED to discover one day, prior to my sons birth, a small piece of nipple hanging off. When you look closely at your nipple you see that there are tiny mountains and valleys. Well, periodically through the course of my pregnancy, a mountain would come loose, fall off, and the valley would grow. I cried the first day i witnessed this horror. When he was born I did not breast feed him due to a reduction I had many years ago where my milk ducts were severed. The inability to nurse was probably a good thing because the nipple would definitely fit through a toilet paper tube and could have been a choking hazard. I hope this does not happen to you but just wanted to warn you in the event it does. I was thoroughly pissed off that no one had told me about this phenomenon before it happened.
Okay, all you whiny pregnant/used to be pregnant beyatches, I AM NOT PREGNANT, nor have I ever been or ever will, and I HAVE BOOBS THAT LOOK LIKE THE SECOND SET. And, I have stretch marks too, lots of them, more stretch mark than boob.
I'm a walking irony. Everything about me screams Pregnancy, and I'm nowhere near pregnant.
THanks, Juliebean, though. You did make me laugh, even through my sad, lonesome tears.
*goes to sob in corner, woe is me*
love the boobs!
First set are subtle, yet pouting. I am too afraid of the second set to comment. I had to look away.
just WAIT till your milk comes in. talk about GIGANTOR! I feel my boobs now look like two tube socks with some rocks in the toes.
Oh my gosh...sweetie...I was rolling in the floor reading about your boobs. Here's a funny story of my own:
After the birth of my first, I had a somewhat difficult time breastfeeding. It got to the point where I didn't care who was in the room, if there was a remote chance of that child latching on I was flopping out boob. One day my poor, unsuspecting, naive brother in law (who I'd only known less than a year) was sitting in the living room watching TV, his back to me. I latched Ab on and went about my merry way. He turned around to me to comment on something he'd seen on TV and good heavens but I thought his eyeballs were going to pop out of his skull. He got up quietly, rather shakily, and went to the other room where he hugged my sister and said, "Holy crap, Heather, why ARE her nipples BLACK????"
Your "befores" were hot. I am 3 months post pregnancy and am still mourning "The Girls." They went from 34DD to an E? F? Do they make sizes that big?
And the stretch marks...oh the stretch marks. Everywhere on the boobies. But I hear the actual size of the aerola go back down and the color isn't as dark as during pregnancy (I think because the blood flow lessons.)
Anyway, congrats. :)
Ok... my poor boobalas... from size B's (and cute!) to double D's... yuck... but now they're down to just D's (my son is now 14 weeks), is this normal? Oh, and by the way? If they don't go away after I d/c breastfeeding, I will personally saw them off in the garage. ;-)
Seriously, is this normal? Or close to normal?
I have a question, I have like milk coming out of my breasts, does that mean im pregnant?
When my breasts developed, they developed downwards into instant saggy boobs. After gaining and losing weight, and the use of steriod creams on my eczema, the skin on my boobs has gone papery thin and when I lie on my back they look deflated and wrinkly.
It's not even something you can fix with surgery, I'm only 22 and I've never had children. Maybe if I chop them off they'll grow back better!