There is absolutely no way to know what a woman’s bust will do when she goes through pregnancy and the first few months of parenthood. As a petite woman myself, I was alarmed to watch myself balloon almost three cup sizes in a matter of months. But then again, some people don’t really change size that much. One friend of mine went from not even an A, to an A cup, and back down to less than A. And she’s still breastfeeding with her baby over one year old, pumped successfully for months, and has never needed to supplement. You just never know what is going to happen.

So with this in mind, how on earth can you figure out what kind of bra you’ll need? As a free and handy starting point, ask around for rejects. If you have friends (or sisters, or sisters-in-law) with young children that won’t think you are too strange for asking, I’d highly recommend asking them to loan (or just give) you their non-favorite nursing bras. Most people will happily unload these upon you. Take any size at all that is bigger than your pre-pregnant size. In the weeks following birth almost everyone’s bra size fluctuates wildly, so having a variety of sizes is great. In my case, I was given a bra that was 5 cup sizes bigger than my pre-pregnancy size. I thought it was preposterous, but sure enough, it came in very handy as the only bra that could comfortably accommodate both my sore, engorged self, and the cloth diapers that were required to contain my impressive leakiness for the first couple weeks.

In the end, one of the rejected bras from my neighbor was a total favorite of mine. At about two months post-partum I bought two Bravado! Original Nursing Bras and have not regretted it. I never would have bought this bra otherwise - it goes over the head (normally I hate that) and it is not cheap, but once I sampled 6 or 7 varieties of bras from my friends, it was obvious that this one fit me the best.

I think it is important to note that even if you are not intending to, or cannot, breastfeed, you still will have to deal with bust size changes during pregnancy and then for at least a week or three after the birth. In this case, borrowing bras is even more practical - because you’ll probably only need them for a short while. - Leigh G.