At 22, I decided to have a breast reduction. I would love to say that deciding to do it was easy. But it wasn’t - it was a decision that I mulled over for a long time. I had gone back and forth on doing the procedure for years because there were so many factors and risks that I had to consider and accept before I felt like I was able to say that I was ready for the procedure fully. I have always loved my body, and I am lucky to have grown up in such a beautiful and supportive body-positive home. I didn’t have the same insecurities most young women experienced because I was always shown what was normal. Although I loved my body the way it was, growing up with extremely large breasts was far from easy.
I started wearing underwire bras when I was about 10. I remember being fitted for an 8E bra when I was 13. At 16, I had to order bras online because my hometown’s local bra store didn’t stock anything above an F cup in a back size 10. I was constantly sexualised by men and assumed to be older because of my breasts. When I was older and was exploring my sexuality, I found a lot of my male peers would treat me as a trophy because of how uniquely large my chest was. It was so horrible to be reduced to such a small part of my body and being. My body constantly ached from the pressure and weight my breasts put on my chest, rib cage, shoulders, neck and back. I constantly had migraines, too.
The day I decided that I had enough was one of the hardest days that I had with my body. At the beginning of the day, I was at university. I was completing my science degree and was spending the morning in the lab. This particular day, the bra I had worn was getting old, and the wires were starting to dig into me, but it was one of the only bras that fit me the best since my last fitting. Bras for people with large breasts are super expensive so I had to either wear a bra until it fell apart or I grew out of it. During class, my back was killing me from leaning over a microscope and lab notes all morning, so I arched back to stretch it. A fellow male colleague made a comment towards me about my lab coat popping from the pressure of my breasts as I stretched and that I should dress more appropriately for a lab. Still, to this day, I don’t know what was wrong with my jeans and baggy plain t-shirt (plus lab coat) look that I had chosen to wear that day, but it was a disgusting comment, and it made me feel like shit. I left the class and skipped my next lecture to buy a new bra because every time I felt the wires dig into my chest and ribs, I felt like it was a reminder of how annoying my breasts were and I could feel myself being sent into a self-loathing spiral. A new supportive bra that fit was all that I needed.
I walked from my university to a bra shop that was nearby that specialised in larger breasts. I picked some bras out in the next cup size up from what I was wearing and tried them on. I was too big for them already. My breasts were popping out. The sales lady came in to fit me. She checked the size I wore and went to see if she could find something better. She told me that they didn’t stock anything larger and gave me a card to a lady that made customised bras. I remember thinking “Great, my bras just doubled in price!” That was the last fitting I had before my reduction, and at that stage, she suggested that I fit into a 10I.
I felt so disheartened that I cried while walking back to uni. On my walk back, I was waiting to cross the street at a light, and a man sitting in his car yelled vulgar comments about my breasts to me as he drove past. I couldn’t believe it! I had over ten years of similar experiences but that day was definitely the worst. I didn’t go back to uni, I went straight home and called my mum and cried my heart out to her. I knew it was time for surgery.
One of the biggest questions I had leading up to the decision was, “How can I love my body this much, but I want to change her so drastically?” I soon came to realise that the reasons for wanting a breast reduction were not coming from a place of self-hate, but a place of self-care. And that was okay. For the sake of my mental health and physical health, I needed this. All the other issues/questions I had with getting the procedure (such as – will I be able to breastfeed afterwards, what will my healed scars look like, will I like the way I look with smaller breasts?) didn’t seem like such an issue once I started researching it better.
The best thing I did once I decided that I wanted to go through with this was to join a Facebook Group that was a support page for people undergoing breast reduction and augmentation. There were so many threads and experiences shared. It was amazing. To anyone considering having one done – my best advice is to join a support page. So many people are on the same journey as you, and it will be the best source of information you can ever find.
The next step in my journey was finding a surgeon. Once I decided on one, I booked a consultation with him. I asked my mum to come with me for support. During the consult, my surgeon asked me to remove my top and bra off so he could look at my breast and explain the procedure to me. I was sitting behind a curtain topless. The surgeon pulled back the curtain and said “Holy Crap!” He instantly apologised for his unprofessionalism and quickly explained that he was shocked to find such large, full breasts on someone with such a small frame. I remember giggling and thinking to myself, “This guy sees big breasts all day, and he is even shocked at my size. I’m definitely making the right choice”. Throughout the consult, he explained that my procedure would be considered a medical surgery and not a cosmetic surgery due to the amount of tissue I would have removed. He wrote me a letter to give to Medicare and my private health insurance, which stated, “My patient is suffering from excessively large breasts”. I laughed at that because I was suffering and finally someone could fix it. I left the consult with a surgery booked for five weeks later.
The day of my surgery was so emotional! I was nervous, excited and full of anticipation. My surgeon let me pick a song to play in the OR while I was being put under. I chose Happy by Pharrell Williams because it seemed appropriate! I woke up a few hours later feeling a little bit tender but feeling very positive. The first thing I did was look down and honestly I couldn’t believe how flat I was!
I could feel the weight difference in my chest with every breath I was taking. I really noticed the difference when I tried to go to the toilet for the first time – my centre of gravity was so off that I actually paged a nurse to help me get out of bed and off the toilet because I was worried about falling over! My surgeon came and saw me the next day. He removed the bandages and was super happy with how I was looking. He told me I had 1.7kgs from one breast and 1.8kgs removed from the other (3.5kgs removed from my chest!!). Honestly, it was amazing!
About four days after my surgery, I noticed my left nipple and areola turning purple. I sent a text with a photo of it to my surgeon to see if it was just bruising and he asked me to come by his office first thing in the morning. By the morning, my nipple and part of my areola had started to turn black! He told me my skin was necrotic (meaning there was no fresh blood being supplied to the tissues and my skin was dying). This is one of the risks of breast reduction. He could see that the tissue beneath the first few layers of skin were fine. This meant he could save my nipple by shaving the dead layers of skin off. This essentially left my nipple an open wound, and I wouldn’t know how much feeling I would have in my nipple or what it would look like until I had fully healed, which took months. My surgeon was so apologetic, but I wasn’t upset. I was well informed about the risks of surgery, and this was one of them. Let’s be real though – I’d rather lose my nipple completely than have to deal with the breastly burden my body had been dealing with for more than 10 years.
About a week post-op, I went to the grocery store with my mum on my first public outing. Halfway through shopping, I started to sob uncontrollably. My mum was really worried that I was in pain or something was wrong, but it wasn’t anything like that at all. For the first time in my adult life, complete strangers were looking me in the eyes first before looking at my body. I didn’t realise until that moment that no one, and I literally mean no one, did that before my surgery. I don’t blame people for looking at my breasts first – they were HUGE beforehand. People are naturally curious and they didn’t mean to look (most of the time anyway). But I didn’t realise how much it had affected me. From that moment, my confidence soared even more as I did all sorts of “firsts” such as buying a bikini, sexy lingerie, a strapless bra and shirts in my actual size for the first time. My style of clothing changed drastically -from baggy clothes to accommodate my breasts to tight-fitting clothes to accentuate my new figure.
Once I was healed, I went running – something that was absolutely impossible for me to do before. I bought crop tops to wear at the gym for the first time and went braless everywhere - I still do today. I cried when I was fitted for the first time. My new size is a 12DD/E. I know to a lot of women, that’s huge still, but remember, I was an I cup beforehand. I know I’m still large breasted but I feel so small now in comparison.
Today is exactly four years since my surgery. My nipple, and the rest of the scars, have healed nicely. They are hardly noticeable. My nipples do not match. My left nipple looks a little dodgy from the scarring, but I’m not ashamed of it. It has most of its feeling and it reacts when it’s stimulated. I have had people recommend cosmetic tattooing to make them match or hide the scars, but I don’t want that. It’s part of my breast reduction story, and I am so proud of my journey that I can’t see myself changing it. I still don’t know if I’ll be able to breastfeed when I choose to have children, but I do know that I will be a healthier Mum. My body feels and looks exactly how I have always seen it. I feel so much more womanly and am more in love with my body than ever.
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