Is it morning already?

You stare bleary eyed at the ceiling, stretching and yawning, and you’re immediately aware of hunger pangs in your puku. You rub your eyes with balled fists and lick your gums. Pulling your warm booties over your feet, you stumble in to the kitchen, just in time to see your muesli and yoghurt walking out the door! Running shoes on, spoon tucked under one arm, clearly trying to make a break for it while you were sleeping.

What would you do? Scream. You would scream and poke your tongue out repeatedly until the delicious breakfast items are returned to you.

That’s what the baby does when I want to leave the house for an early run. And fair enough, I get hungry, and I love breakfast too. I just don’t enjoy having to be the breakfast.

I was aware of all ‘The things NOBODY tells you about pregnancy and child birth!’ after clicking the bait and reading at least ten online articles with that exact title. But I still got a shock with the titties. As a life-long member of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee (who never graduated from wearing an A-cup bra) the titties have been my biggest challenge.

If you run a lot you might be in the same teeny tiny boat. Boobs are not something you need to worry about when they are small. They never bounce, they don’t get chafe, and you can keep wearing the same grimy, stretched, unsupportive crop-top you’ve had for the past six years because all it’s really doing is censoring your nipples.

Of all the misguided yet well-meaning advice given to me while pregnant this had the poorest timing, ‘Make the most of them when they’re small’.

You see, people were giving me this advice a few weeks after I had given birth. Perhaps they were referring to the baby, but I couldn’t see any baby past these giant milky globes and salami nipples.

By the time you get this advice it is too late and your tits are at their peak size. Bloated like a week-old dead ewe, and so tender that even looking at them hurts. They are leaky, vascular, rock-hard melons.

Oh, it’s far too late. You think back to those times, nine months ago, when your tiny rack fit neatly into a size small crop top. A single thin layer of stretchy fabric, and you could run without needing reinforced stitching in your bra or your vagina.

Gone are the days where you could break into a care-free jog to cross the street, the days of hugging people without your boobs noticeably pressing in to their chest, and the days of taking selfies from any angle other than above your face. You have cleavage to consider now so your ‘best angle’ has completely changed.

I wish I had made the most of them while they were small. I think back to the times when I moaned about my small chest, and my boobs looking like two extra abdominal muscles rather than actual mammaries.

I use to pull a crop top over my head and be on my merry way out the door for a run in the sun. Then my chest grew and I had to introduce a new check before heading out the door.

• House key – check
• Laces double-knotted – check!
• Socks match my crop top and shoes are of a complimentary colour – check
• Nipples are in alignment – che-

Wait, what?

They take a while to get use to, but like most pregnancy and child related things they will change quickly and before I know it they will be gone, faded deflated to a distant memory. So I’ll be making the most of them while they’re big.

Urban Dictionary Definition

‘The tits’

The same as The Shit, only better because tits are great and shit isn’t.

‘That Shit Was The Tits!’