I dropped a bra size, I dropped a bra size!

You should read the subject line with a "neener neener" tone in your mind.

This may be one of those TMI posts for some, if so, just skip it.  I know CaryAnne will be proud of me, being an actual Weight Watchers employee and all, and everyone who loves me will just be pleased that if I can ever get ginormous to reduce to just plain big, well my neck and back will be a good deal happier.   Claire, who is skinny and bony and needs a good cushion, will likely disappointed because she likes me squashy, but there's a long way to go before I lose my cushiony qualities.

Talking with moms about our birth stories, our nursing or failure to nurse stories, our bodies post baby and all of that leave us with pretty much one conclusion: this shit is hard!  I've struggled with weight for a life time, had breasts since age 11, never knew what a training bra was, until my 13 year old friends got them, and generally wished for decades that I was less voluptuous.  I'd tell you about the time I nearly squashed a tata in the refrigerator door, but I don't know if all ya'll know me well enough to believe it.  That was when I was about 16.  When I was of a normal weight in college but well endowed, I ruined countless shirts not just by catching food but by setting them down on a dirty table or bar.  I had my babies late and much heavier, when my breasts had already begun their race to my lap.  Claire was so little at birth, she really lacked the muscle strength to nurse, so I pumped and she had an NG tube and every day, with the occupational therapists and lactation specialists, we practiced and practiced.  Long after I got her home, she finally got the hang of nursing without a breast shield, a certain Boppy at a certain angle, and someone, myself or a friend if one was nearby priming the nipple with drops of milk from a syringe of previously pumped milk.  We never got to full time nursing and I went back to work, having made sure my supply would always outstrip demand, I filled my sister's deep freeze and my own with bags of milk.  She nursed for nine months and gave up, I pumped for six more., and she had three more months of defrosted milk to tide her over.  My size dropped between nursing and the next pregnancy, as did my nipples themselves, so I expected it would happen the second time around.   Again, I got a hospital baby with an NG tube, pumped myself into a frenzy (no Katy, I was never that mother, I was the mother people took from) and again stockpiled milk while trying to teach a lazy baby to nurse, despite the relative ease of bottle feeding.  I lost thirty pounds in thirty days because of all the fun and illness right after Hannah's birth, and still the durned things got fluffier still.  This one quit nursing at four months, and because I felt guilt over Hannah's metabolic disorder and feeling she needed the best I could provide, I pumped until she was 18 months old.  I expected my nursies to shrink, again.  Nope.

I actually have an exercise bra in a cup size that shall remain nameless, since the letter is further through the alphabet than I thought possible for clothing sizes.  Meanwhile, my neck injury of 13 years ago has reared its ugly head, given the weight of the pump bottles, the nursing, the holding of 20+ pound people, the crawling on my hands and knees to help Hannah get crawling, and the fact that all lawyers/women/office workers tend to hold tension in their necks and shoulders.  I've taken a million pills, I went back to PT and got some new ideas, went back to Jazzercise (where I get a few of those backhanded compliments about how great I am at it, which I am sure come when it must surprise them to see a fat woman outdance them, and don't come from pure meanness) and although I haven't really cut calories as I should I have dropped a few pounds.

And blissfully, a bra size.  I nearly kissed the sales clerk who helped me today.  I bought two.  One cotton, one not.  I nearly boasted at a child's birthday party this evening but I managed to find some self control and shut my pie-hole.  But here I am, telling you!  The whole internet!  You couldn't call them tiny, but I am so pleased I'm going to now eat an entire Totino's pizza with extra cheese.  Heh-heh.