How breastfeeding has finally helped me embrace the boobs I’ve hated all my life

I’ve always hated having big boobs. They’re the sort that juggle like two bowls of blancmange when I run. I’ve grown up wishing they were the smaller, neater, hibernating kind that wispy dresses would cling to, the types that didn’t require big, bulky bikini tops, collect food crumbs like a mini, always-on-standby vacuum or somehow make those dainty-on-the-hanger lace-and-ribbon bralettes turn into the sort big enough to swallow two small dogs.

You see, my relationship with my 34FF cups has been a somewhat complex one. As anyone with a large bust will know, moans tend to be met with “Oh, but I’d die for those” but it’s not that simple. My teenage years were spent concealing them after a trip to my local swimming pool ended with a 13-year-old boy yelling “Fat boobs!” across the water, exactly the kind of comment that would swing a young, body-conscious woman into full boob paranoia.

As someone who is naturally petite, having big boobs attracted unwanted attention. So, I learnt to conceal them, I ousted them to an invisible state and learnt to dress without their distraction, despite my husband’s protests. While I’d never seriously considered surgery, I used to dream what it would be like to have easy, breezy B cups.

When I fell pregnant last year, my excitement was mixed with some boob-related dread. How much bigger would they get? I’d already told my mum it was unlikely I would breastfeed, I just wouldn’t like the sensation, the thought of having to get them out all the time, to wear clothes with easy access and not my usual bust flattering necklines, nope, this wouldn’t be for me. My boobs, after all, were something to be banished. They had absolutely no use to me.

However, one sultry summer’s night in July this year everything changed. My freshly-hatched newborn, barely awake, with a head full of hair and skin as soft as cashmere, was placed onto my naked breasts, he sucked. They say babies are born with the sucking reflex and if you place them on your chest, they can miraculously make their way up to your breast on their own, a sort of survival instinct. My first experience of breastfeeding was a weird sensation, it felt alien, odd, a little uncomfortable. Fuelled by the labour-inducing hormone, oxytocin, that tingly feeling eventually felt overwhelmingly emotional. There he was, my baby, the tiny human who had been kicking me about for the past nine months, feeding from the very boobs I had despised all my life.

The next 24 hours were a learning curve, newborns tend to do well on that initial feed but can need a helping hand thereafter. Trying to feed a baby who just wants to sleep is no easy task, it felt like a frustrating game, me shuffling around, attempting to get a tiny mouth latched on correctly, my husband holding up one heaving, veiny boob in his hand to get this new, tiny creature to stay put.