So, I got an Underworks binder, the double front compression shirt. I was excited, had always heard good things, had high hopes.
Figured that at the very least, it had to do a better job than the Ace velcro back-wrap thing just used to hold an icepack against the lower back that I've been using. :\
This thing is awful and I don't know if I'm just confused and doing something horribly wrong or what I should have expected but it's... inhuman.
It was a two-man effort to get it on, to start. I could not possibly put it on by myself, and it still took a ridiculous amount of effort on my partner's behalf to get it on me. Getting it off was just as terrible.
It, more or less... didn't do what it was supposed to.
Awful as it is to admit, I have a supposedly "ideal" hourglass figure with just some extra weight -- my chest is big and sticks out far, while my stomach/waist is more slender before the curve of my hips.
The binder hurt my abdomen and my lower back profusely, but controlled my breasts even less than a typical bra.
I was jiggling in it like I belonged in Baywatch. Every step I took, the only thing I was aware of was the embarrassing jiggling.
Despite the fact that my chest is large (and certainly sticks out farther than my belly), there was still extra material that bunched up at the sides of the 'straps' near my underarms, even though it was painfully tight at my waist.
It didn't really flatten my chest much at all, there is still no possible way I could have passed. It did, granted, make it "less obvious," and I can acknowledge that it is difficult (impossible?) to appear flat with the size of my chest, but I had heard such great things about it from others with large sizes.
I wore it for all of, maybe, three hours... and felt awful. I was light-headed, sore, and certainly unable to move naturally.
I don't think I got the wrong size... considering the purpose of it. It was too loose where it needed to be tight, my chest area... yet so tight it was painful and difficult to get on/off, and so constricting at my abdomen. But maybe I did? I can't possibly imagine getting into anything smaller (I can barely imagine putting this one back on!) yet I don't think a larger one would be any better for the actual chest binding.
I just don't know. I appreciate and think that it is great that the Underworks site exists and sells such products, I'm not out to ruin their business or good name or discredit them, because deep down my insecurities are telling me that it just didn't work for me because I'm too weird and messed up physically.
When I was big C/low D-ish, I could use Ace bandages and pull it off, but now that I'm bigger it just seems so impossible.
Do I really have no option at all other than to wait however long for surgery?
There's some sort of underlying question in all this ranting -- did I pick the wrong binder for my body, is there a right one to possibly pick, are my proportions just freakish and I'm doomed forever, any advice, similar experiences, better experiences, better alternatives?
