Iron Boobs

I'm in the same situation as you, had a bilateral mastectomy with direct to implant reconstruction on 19th Oct, my boobs are feeling like flatten concrete. When the dressings came off I was surprised at how flat I looked and I immediately jumped online to check if it was normal, it was. In fact I found a thread on here where several women were talking about the same thing (I'll see if I can find it). The consensus was that the implants soften and relax over time and will be totally different by 8 weeks and again by 4 months. Long time to wait but hopefully worth it.

I've been taking pictures daily so far and will switch to weekly so I don't get dishearten by the lack of change. It's amazing how they have changed from day one already. I still have one blackened nipple so I need to keep an eye on that, it's apparently bruised according to my BN.

It does seem to be hard to find other people who have had direct to implant instead of TE or flaps. I too had nipple sparing with 325cc moderate plus implants.

Tesla I found the thread that put my mind at ease, hope it helps you too. https://community.breastcancer.org/forum/44/topics...

I made the decision to go for direct to implant instead of TE because I wanted to have the minimal amount of surgeries. I thought, like you, that I had done enough research but then iron boobs came as somewhat of a surprise to me too. I wasn't massive prior to surgery so I guess I thought anything was better than nothing.

The appearance of my foobs seems to change everyday and after reading other peoples experience I know they CAN look better than they currently do. I have seen some pictures of women 6 months post op, direct to implant, and their foobs seem to be rounder and really quite impressive.

I guess it's a waiting game. You're not alone and there will always be people before us, with us and after us, that will go through this.

Like you I wanted to stay the same or go up by one size which is achievable with direct to implant. My surgeon estimated I had about 300g's of breast tissue and she replaced that with 325cc implants so I guess I got my desired outcome. My breasts were basically an A cup but with a C cup width and no upper pole volume. The 325cc implants will give me a B/C cup and again with no upper pole volume.

People seem to think that if you had no boobs to start with then you will be happy to lose them. I don't think that's necessarily the case but it does give us a little more wiggle room.

I don't expect there to be much difference at week 4 but I suspect you can't tell the leaps your foobs have already made. I am only 8 days post op and mine have already changed so much, they are still hard and flat but either they are looking better each day or my expectations are getting lower.