Help wanted.

I am struggling to buy a bra.  You would think at my age I would be well experienced at this.  Well things, and boobs, change.

This is how you measure.  From this you do all sorts of mathematical calculations and decide whether you are a 36 B, C, D. Or whatever.

My boobs have been quite a lot of different measurements over the years.  Breast feeding for about six years (four children) you wonder how the human body can go out and in so many times without packing in.

Now why you measure above the bosoms remains a mystery.  Should I have taken that into my calculations?

As I got older and thinner, I wont say slimmer as that indicates muscle tone and I am not sure I have any of that.  I decided I would have a 'professional' measuring at a local emporium.  

Hordes of Women milling about, I think there was some special offer on at the time.  I was eventually ushered into a changing room, for privacy.  Only so far as my boobs not being seen by others, what went on in there was shouted out to the rest of the gathered females,  waiting to be measured,

"34 D Brenda!"

 34?  Even pre puberty I was never 34.  I swam a lot and developed quite a broad back.  But no, 34 .  Into the changing room came a selection of 34Ds.  

"Lean forward and drop them in."  "There! Isnt that an improvement?"  

Well they were certainly higher, but I couldnt breathe .  But assured I would feel better as I 'got used to it', I handed over more money than I had ever yet paid for a bra and essayed out.  After some weeks of feeling I had something or someone gripped on to my upper body I returned to the saggy things I had wanted to replace.  I breathed.

One major part of the new bras I could not get used to was the underwiring.  It was like some vice clamped onto my body, occasionally the soft flesh got trapped and I was for ever hoiking parts of me I had forgotten about for some years, back into this clamp.

Remember the Triumph Bras?  Where we all went to a point?  

And now we have the Balcony Bras.  Balcony Bras?  Most real women would be spilling over the balcony.

Why oh why can we not have something without underwire, that lifts and separates ( I seem to remember the dim and distant past of Cross Your Heart ? ) Comfortable. Yes.  No instruments of torture aka underwires ( and yes I did try and remove the bloody things, the bra then held nothing in.)  Looked more like a sandwich.

At my age - and size - I could probably forget about wearing a bra altogether, and yes, I was around in the burning your bra age, never did understand that particular campaign.  Point of yes, but not actually discarding the thing.

But there are occasions when I am not smothered by a hoodie or ten layers and want to feel feminine, without the PAIN.  

Help?