Hey all,
This post goes out to everyone that's concerned about hip growth. I want to reassure many younger transitioners that changes take time and patients is key!
I've been on HRT for 2 years (26 months if we're being exact). Started at 19. I was incredibly small before HRT. My shoulders were small but my hips in particular were so disgustingly small. They were barely 29 inches. I couldn't even wear men's pants because they were actually that small. I can't believe how much they've expanded and the growth is mostly bone. As of now, they're 36 inches of mostly bone growth. I see before and after pictures and my rib cage was wider than my pelvis but now my pelvis is much wider than the rib cage by a long shot.
Am I happy? Yes. Am I 100% satisfied? I mean, is anyone every 100% satisfied? Lol. All joking aside, I feel like I finally got the bone structure right, but my insecurity is the fat distribution. Bone growth in cis women seems to occur early when estrogen levels are low but fat distribution takes years and years and occurs when levels increase towards the middle of puberty. Fat distribution takes time and the right estrogen levels. I'm gaining it for sure and rounding out but it takes time. I always have to remind myself that I went from thighs that looked like most people's arms to typical "skinny girl" thighs and it's a big accomplishment in only 2 years.
I've had really gross looking purple stretch marks right where the greater trochanter sits ever since 6 months into HRT. They got worse and faded and then got worse and faded on a continuous cycle over the past 2 years. The joints have been cracking and clunking since a year in. The part where the pelvis meets the femur cracks kind of like when you crack your fingers. The sacrum (or at least that's what I believe it is based on my extremely accurate educated guess while staring at a diagram of the pelvis) also clunks forward when I'm sitting down and this feels extremely satisfying. It's like the entire thing just shifts forward and clunks when I shift in my seat. I do this a lot in class or when I'm driving, yeah, I'm weird. I know. It makes a deep clunk sound and shifts forward and it's just insanely satisfying.
Recently, I suddenly got a ton of purple stretch marks on the back of the knee. I couldn't explain this because there's just no fat there and I genuinely thought I had a skin condition or even a hormonal issue like Cushing's Syndrome that was causing it.
Tonight, it hit me that men and women have different pelvic shapes and the female pelvis causes the legs to be more angled than in men because of the width of the pelvis. Women have more V shaped legs and men have straight legs. It makes sense now (or at least to me it does) that the legs have a different angle now and the femur is just stretching the skin on the back of the knee out due to it's new angle.
This post is just intended to reassure transitioners that hormones are responsible for a lot of physical and mental things and the changes happen very slowly but they do happen! Trust me. I'm a stressed out college student that's constantly sleep deprived and malnourished and things still happened.
