After baby, like, awhile after baby, when my belly was semi-normal size, I slipped on my trusty ice-blue Uniqlo jacket. Warm and cozy, but light as marshmallow fluff, I wanted it to defend me against the stiff March breeze.
It zipped over my slightly protruding belly. But it wouldn’t zip up over my chest. Que annoying!
I tried to be happy that I had another data point on the unending aftereffects of childbearing to add to my complaint stream. But I was pretty mad that I couldn’t wear my jacket.
When I was finally done with breastfeeding (finally! but what would I find to complain about now?), it -still- wouldn’t zip.
What the heck?
It wasn’t the most form-fitting jacket or anything. For the first three months of my pregnancy, I had worn it pretty much daily and at all times so my high school students wouldn’t know I was pregnant (ha ha! tricked them!) until I wanted to tell them.
And my workout shirts were crinkled up around my rib cage. They looked weird. I thought it was my giant lats threatening to break through the back of my shirts, so I tried to punch less hard. (I do a lot of boxing.)
But it wasn’t my lats. It was my ribs. They had expanded during pregnancy to make room for that baby and had gotten stuck in the expanded position.
A non-ideal rib position turned out to me a problem for much more than sporting my normcore Japan-style fall fashion. Stay tuned to learn about the perils of postpartum ribs.
Oh yeah, and about…The Bra That Wouldn’t Fit.
