Boobs, breasts, jugs, norks, mammary glands, whatever you called them, they were not welcome in my life. I spent my childhood years as a bona fide tomboy. I could climb all the trees down the green in my housing estate, I rolled with an all-boy skate crew, ollying my way up kerbs on my brother’s old fibreglass skateboard, I played up front on the school football team, the only girl dribbling around the knobbly knees of a pitch full of pre-pubescent boys. I never dreamt of getting married, I never collected Barbie dolls, I was going to be a marine biologist or a set designer for the theatre when I grew up. Womanhood was an enigma, something I knew was inevitable but still very much a faraway mystery that would be solved YEARS down the line. Not until Tracey O’Connor took me into a toilet cubicle at lunchtime in 6th class and told me she had her period did the reality of impending puberty come crashing down on my happily oblivious existence. It was all hushed tones, talk of tampons and bleeding. Ominous stuff. Then we had the sex education class in school and I looked on, confounded, struggling to equate my body with the biological model of a cervix that was in front of me. I chose to ignore it all … until I came home from school one day to find my mother waiting for me in the kitchen with a book explaining sex. I burst out crying and ran out of the room. That’s how I felt about sex at eleven. Two words. Not Ready.
The boobs came around the age of fourteen. There was the purchase of sports bras, worn as social armour, as a sign to say, ‘Look! I’m grown up!’ rather than out of any necessity. There was nothing there to support. Eventually, when my breasts started to grow, they grew lopsided. My left breast was noticeably bigger than my right. There were many traumatic hours stood in front of the mirror with my hands above my head, desperately willing my right breast to grow more. Oh what a turbulent and heightened time those early teens are, with everything growing out and up. I thought I was the only person in the world going through all this profound confusion; I was going to have lopsided breasts for the rest of my life!
My bathroom pleas were granted and my breasts finally balanced out. As the school years edged by and my skirt length edged up, they felt the crude groping hand movements of my various boyfriends. With a sex life came a pale pink box with the word ‘Celeste’ written across the front in delicate lilac letters. The contraceptive pill resulted in inexplicable mood swings. In tandem with the tears and turmoil there was the rapid and rather alarming swell of my breasts. A whole cup size in a matter of weeks! I went on and off the pill throughout my twenties and my breasts ballooned in and out, inflating and deflating in direct correlation to my sexual experiences.
Mid-twenties, a serious relationship and my first attempt at cohabitation meant routine and regular exercise for the first time in my life. I lost all my puppy fat and became a streamlined version of my previous pot-bellied self. My breasts shrank and have remained a very normal 34C, until now. Now, my body has changed wholly and completely. A blue cross on a white stick five months ago means I have become a vehicle. A tiny wriggly thing, fists clenched, eyes squeezed shut, is squirming in my uterus. I can feel it kicking. My belly is stretched and taut, my breasts swollen into huge fleshy pendulous receptacles, and my mind boggles with the miracle of my physiology. They are going to feed my baby. My own breasts are going to feed my baby. It is yet another chapter for them and me to get through. When I write it all down, they tell my story very well.