Confessions of a Small-Chested Breastfeeder
Guilty of Wonderbra Fraud
My boobs are small. I have been self-conscious about them most of my life until I became a breastfeeding mom and embraced the concept that boobs are primarily for food.
We live in a boob-obsessed culture, and I don’t know if it is worse now or when I was growing up in the late 90s and early aughts. Perfectly round, pert, big juicy peach-watermelon hybrids are the gold standard. Spoiler alert almost no one has natural boobs like this. Adidas clued us in last year, thankfully. Glad they finally caught on to help. As a marketer I am always conflicted about these types of campaigns. I’ll sum up my thoughts with something my grandmother would say, “isn’t that nice?” Which means both that’s nice and it’s about effing time.
My boobs are small and wide-set and from the time I wore a bra until my mid-twenties I was shoving them into padded A-cups. Until I got a fitting at Nordstrom that changed my life. I am a D-cup! The underwire on A-cups was cutting my boobs in half - it should have extended under my armpit.
I always felt like a fraud in my padded, ill-fitting bras. I was going to get found out and then what would happen? I would be dismissed by any potential mate for small boobs. (Enneagram enthusiasts, I am a 1:1 Four. And it all makes sense…). Once I finally sorted out the mate part and pro-created, this led to my new worry. Would these boobs produce milk so I could breastfeed?
Yes, but it wasn’t easy. I don’t think it had anything to do with size, and more to do with stress. My first was born at 29 weeks and I relied primarily on pumping. I fortified what milk I could pump (never enough) and supplemented the rest. My second came at 37 weeks, half the feedings I could nurse directly and the rest I had to pump and fortify or supplement. I could get maybe one or two feedings of breastmilk a day, the rest was formula. So I felt guilty about small boobs and formula.
My third, the IUD baby, arrived at 40 weeks and still nurses today, although we hit a bump in the beginning. While troubleshooting that bump, the lactation consultant at our pediatrician’s office (who I’d worked with on multiple occasions the first two attempts), suggested that I might not have enough mammary tissue to produce. I was already in full melt-down mode at that appointment and that comment put me over the edge. A few days later I was picking my oldest up from ballet camp with the baby in tow and had a conversation with her instructor, a petite ballerina. She breastfed all four of her kids. Mammary tissue didn’t seem to be the issue.
What are all of these issues about? Lack of confidence. Self-consciousness. Judgment. Fear. Stress. Not-good-enoughness. They’ve been around for a long time, and while they have grown up since I entered motherhood it still feels like they are squatting in my basement. So now instead of trying to block the door I invite them up to the dinner table. They’ll sit next to Trust, Intuition, Self-love, Abundance, Gratitude, and Worthiness. And chances are everyone is going to see my small boobs out if I’m feeding the baby. Because no matter what size, boobs are for food too.
Get your peaches/peach-melons down in Georgia? Share some with a friend and share this post.
I recently had a rousing and riveting conversation about boobs and intuition with my amazing friend Amanda Valentine on her podcast Pound This. Give it a listen here.
Social photo by J D on Unsplash
Headshot by Ross Van Pelt for The Scout Guide