At just 14, Ellie Nash was an F-cup and from there her breasts just kept on growing. When she had to leave her job Ellie knew she had to take action.

Ellie Nash, 21, from Melbourne, didn’t realise just how much her enormous breasts were holding her back. She tells her story in her own words.

The bra fitter slipped the tape measure around my chest. She was super professional, but I could see her eyes widen.

“So you’re size F,” she said. “How old did you say you were?”

“I’m 14,” I replied, looking at my mum, Deb, who gave my hand a reassuring squeeze.

“I’ll see what I can find,” the bra fitter said.

She returned with a couple of enormous pieces of beige fabric which looked nothing like the cute, lacy bras my friends wore.

It was the same when I tried on clothes later. I had to pick big sizes which swamped me elsewhere, but were the only ones that fitted around my chest.

“They’ll stop growing soon,” Mum said.

She and my sister, Amy, then 23, were both C cups, so my big breasts were a family anomaly.

And as I got older, my breasts kept getting bigger. By the time I was 17, I was a size JJ.

Shops in Australia didn’t stock my size so I had to order bras online from the US. Even those ones were so uncomfortable that I’d go braless at home, which came with its own raft of problems.

“I’ve got heat rash again,” I’d sigh to Mum, and off we’d go to the GP for cream and dressing to cover the painfully blistered area under my breasts.

I’d get daily cysts under there too, which would explode and sting. I felt like such a mess, but it seemed like this was just my lot in life.

I stopped going out very much at all, sick of the stares and snide comments about how I was trying to show off my breasts. It was the last thing I was trying to do.

Besides, it had become too painful to do much. I’d given up sport years before because my breasts would painfully bounce on my chest. And the extra weight had gradually hunched me over and made my back and hips ache all the time.

It was like I was being crushed by my breasts.

“You could have a breast reduction,” Mum suggested when I was 18.

It was expensive though, and I’d just met a guy, Joseph, then 24, who liked me for me. So I parked the idea for a while.

A year later, when I had to give up my job at a day care centre because it was too physical, I realised I had to do something.

Joining some Facebook groups, at last I realised that I wasn’t alone. Hearing how breast reductions had changed other people’s lives, I decided to do the same.

By June 2021, I’d found a surgeon who I felt comfortable with.

“We’ll take about a kilo from each breast and you’ll go down to about a D or E cup,” she said.

Mum and my dad, Anthony, helped me with the $9000 bill. I was so grateful. Before I went in for the op, Mum helped me make a plaster cast of my breasts so I could keep it as a memory of my big breasts.

On April 8, 2022, I went in for the seven-hour surgery. Seeing the drawings of where the incisions would go before I was put to sleep, I was confused about two circles drawn on my chest.

“What are they for?” I asked.

“That’s where your nipples will sit,” the surgeon told me.

I was shocked. My nipples hung way down by my belly button. I’d hardly seen them in years, so the idea they could be so high brought home how different I’d look.

Waking up in recovery later, I tried to prepare myself for the result.

“Have you taken them all?” I asked a nurse, seeing my chest flattened with a compression bandage.

“No,” she laughed. “But they did take more than expected.”

Instead of one kilo from each breast, they took three! I’d lost an incredible six kilos off my chest, and was still a D cup!

The day after the op, I saw my new breasts properly. Even with the swelling and scarring, I sobbed happy tears of joy. “They look amazing,” I cried.

Within weeks, I was feeling ready to take on the world as the new me.

“I can breathe,” I laughed to Joseph. “And I feel like I could start running and never stop.”

I’d stopped snoring, which had been an issue, and hadn’t needed my asthma pump once.

The other thing I loved now was cuddles.

Holding my two-month-old niece, Charlotte, I now realised how close we could be without my enormous breasts in the way. It was so beautiful.

Today, I am still healing but I’m so happy and proud of my new body. And I’m still trying to find the perfect spot in the house to hang my plaster breasts!

It’s been a hard few years but at last I’m ready, and able, to start living.

This story originally appeared in that’s life! magazine and has been republished here with permission.

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