This blog entry is about boobs. If you can't handle it, you shouldn't be on the internet, home to many, many, and many more boobs. But more than boobs, this is about bras. It is about the bras that could fit me properly, if only I had them.
See, first the baby comes. Then your breasts blow up like their pregnant. They get hard and pornographically huge. Then, after you make some money selling photos of them (say for the first nine months), they shrink. And not back to their former shape. They shrink into a new formation, with a gracious nod of acceptance towards the powers of gravity.
Then, you have another baby. You think you're a D or maybe a DD and once you were a 36, but now it seems like your rib cage has enlarged (presumably to allow you to scream LOUDER at your toddler; isn't nature amazing?) to something like a 40, and no bra you have ever acquired comes close to doing anything useful with those puppies.
So what am I supposed to do? They keep changing! Every nursing bra I have is ripped. (You know, the baby clawing at me for more....) The underwire is beginning to escape from certain other bras. (Oh, yeah, that feels good in my sternum.) And, in yet others, the little metal clasps have gone creative on me, taking on new, impossible to clasp, directions.
My husband is convinced I am a hippie. But it can't be so. If I were a hippy, I wouldn't care about a bra. But I do. I want a bra. I really want a bra for my two little piggies. And I want it to fit. And lift. And NOT break. And Last. Gee, now that I think of it, I feel the same way about most of the people in my life, including my husband.
So, here's what I've learned post-baby about bras (and you know about me and bras):
ReplyDelete1. Skip the fancy stores, like Victoria's Secret. They are not designed for moms. They are designed to push teeny boobs up under the chins of 14 year olds.
2. Head directly to an UPSCALE department store, like Macy's. (I used the fancy Interwebs to determine that they do, in fact, have one at the Eastfield mall)
3. Grab a large range of sizes, a nice shirt you can't afford that flatters your figure, (heck, why not grab several? and a dress...) and head to a fitting room.
4. Try them all on. Twist and turn, enjoying the sight of yourself in the too-expensive clothes.
5. When you have found THE BRA, put everything back. Breeze out of the store like you have all the free time in the world to try things on and not buy, like there are no children at home waiting anxiously for your return.
6. Go to an old-lady department store, like JC Penney's, or Sears.
7. Locate the generic equivalent of the fancy brand bra you loved (matching size, cup shape, support features etc.) and buy it, for usually 1/2 the cost. In fact, buy 2 or 3. And maybe that totally impractical lacy little black one, too, while you're there. You know, for laundry days, when the others are all dirty.
8. Go home. Wait for your husband to comment on the new location and shape of your lovely twins. Tell him how much money you SAVED by not buying at the department store. Maybe inflate the number by the price of some of those lovely clothes you didn't get. Use this as justification later in the week when you spend some ridiculous amount of money on something else to make yourself feel pretty.
Thank you, wise woman. And may all other mothers benefit from your words!!
ReplyDeleteHey, Sam, if you want to check out a local resource, Therese Legere (Shutesbury, I think) invented a new style of bra for real women with real breasts. She offers a nursing model, too. Her company is called ZeeBras
ReplyDeleteI can't wear anything else anymore. They're . . . comfy. Really!
Not as much lift as we're used to, but no backache, no slipping shoulder straps, no bursities, etc.