Boobies & Veins, Oh My!

One thing I was excited about pregnancy for was the cleavage. I’ve been on the smaller side of average my entire life and was ready to experience what it would be like to have a non-permanent boob job, except I ended up getting horrible stretch marks. I thought those were only for the stomach but nope, I didn’t get any on my stomach with my first because my boobs decided to suck them all away. So for the first pregnancy and birth, I couldn’t show the massive boobs off because I had purple streaks all over them, like a sunburst happened around my areolas. They eventually faded but for the second pregnancy, I ended up lopsided. One boob was superstar milk producer while the other was a flunky.  Areolas, the part of the nipple that you generally consider a non-entity, become show stealers. As in they steal the show because they are taking up half of your boobs. Apparently they grow in size and darken.  Pretty peach/ pink will turn into brown/ purple, etc. (They will go back to normal after you stop breastfeeding).  Light skinned women will also have another kind of map on their breasts besides possible stretch marks: veins. If blue and green were street maps, I could have had NYC on my chest.

Veins are not just for chests, oh no. Your legs will quite possibly look like your grandmothers', with spider veins or varicose veins, or both!  Again, pale skinned people, this may be time to wear pants because the sun/tanning is harmful and bottle tans are a no-no in pregnancy. Why can’t you be a sun bunny while pregnant? Well, you can, as long as you understand that you are going to develop a linea nigra that will take forever to fade. The tanner I got, the darker the line got. Then other parts of me started to get darker. My underarms, eyelids, belly button area, crotch area, neck area. Basically your hormones cause any areas with delicate skin to darken. Sun exposure emphasizes this. It took up to a year post-pregnancy for these areas to fade. Combined with stretch marks, I was in mourning over my pristine pre-baby flat stomach.