There were certain areas of my body I was aware would never be the same again after having a baby. My tummy, for starters, had stretched to accommodate a baby that maxed out at the size of a watermelon, so I was expecting some loose, excess skin. I knew that my pelvic floor had been through the wringer, and would require daily squeezing exercises to strengthen it. A raised scar and a pocket of fat above it would be the lasting memento of an emergency C-section. But one area I wasn’t prepared to see changing as drastically as it did? My boobs.
It never occurred to me that my breasts had undergone as significant a change as my abdomen. After all, an increased cup size is one of the best-known physical changes of pregnancy and your postpartum body, as your breasts fill with milk. “During pregnancy the breasts undergo significant changes,” explains plastic surgeon William Van Niekerk, “In preparation for breastfeeding, the breasts become fattier, and the glands become hyperplastic, because the breasts are increasing in size, so the overlying skin is stretched out as well and often the blood vessels become more engorged and more obvious.”
