Let’s talk tits.

First, a brief, yet fulsome, history.

My chesty endowment arrived sometime during winter 1984, in a massive rush. I think hormones were to blame, but that’s yet another tangent. From slender, overnight I became an E-cup freak. I hated them. People spoke directly to my bosom. Some boys thought I must be easy. Some previously amicable older girls became crisp, sometimes catty. The way that many people now addressed me, it seemed they’d assumed my IQ was riding in reverse proportion to my bra size. This continued, obviously, through my 20s, and it was only when I was quite underweight during the crazy late 1990s that I could ever wear a strapless anything. But boobs defined me, and personally I didn’t dig it: the assumed sexual persona baggage, and the physical, actual, weighty baggage.

I vowed early on that I would get rid of this baggage the moment I stopped breastfeeding my family.

So, in 2008, when CC was nearly 2, I donated my breasts to science. Most of them. It was as awesome as I had hoped. When they’d healed, I ran along a beach. In a bikini.

Running on a beach in a bikini is something you should never take for granted.

My surgeon, a sensible man who saw the beauty in subtle dimensions, asked if I was sure I’d finished my family.

“Hell yeah,” I replied. After all, I was nearly 38, with two beautiful boys. Any more children would be environmentally selfish, anyway. But why?

“Because it’s pretty bloody difficult to breastfeed after a reduction,” he replied.

I love breastfeeding. I love being able to. I breastfed both my boys for nine months. S-Man weaned himself at nine months, so I chose to wean CC at the same age, later, for (psychoanalytically-influenced?) symmetry.

This time around, the first indication that I was pregnant was via my bosom. It ached. It still does, at 18 weeks, but a little less than that first trimester. Perhaps there are ducts in there trying to work, trying to reconnect. I’ve been fortunate, post-reduction, that my nipples are still as sensitive as ever. (Joy!) Dr Google leads me to pages that promise I’ll be able to feed, perhaps with less milk. We’ll see. My breasts are different this time around. Last pregnancies, they swelled to H-cups. Hideous. I had to visit “specialist retailers” for underwear. I marvelled at the silly women who chose this weighty burden willingly, porn stars or glamour girls or otherwise, pumped up with saline or silicone. Why??? This time around, they’ve swelled back from C/D to DD again, which I can handle. They’re still gorgeous, these pert little hills that seem stolen from a 17-year-old: the bosom I should have had at 17. Better enjoy them now. They won’t be so cheeky in 18 months.