MADELEINE WEST: 'My boobs and I have been fighting for 20 years.'

If you want to support independent women's media, become a Mamamia subscriber. Get an all-access pass to everything we make, including exclusive podcasts, articles, videos and our exercise app, MOVE.

There's a storm brewing in my D-cup. Now I'm back breastfeeding, an unwelcome guest has taken up residence in my over the shoulder boulder holders. Battle lines are drawn and I'm facing off with that ancient enemy of lactating mums.

Yep, I've got MASTITIS! 

In case you are new to Mastitis, it is not a fancy salami, a small island in French Polynesia, or a type of lock jaw incurred from chewing too vigorously. Mastitis is when a breast-feeding mother develops an infection in her milk ducts, and life falls to pieces.

Watch: Madeleine West talks parenting later in life on No Filter… Post continues below.

Mastitis is cracked nipples, drier than the Sahara. Mastitis is forcing molten lava through some of the most delicate epidermis on the human body.  Any guys out there passed a kidney stone? Then you feel me. Mastitis is a Brazilian wax times a gazillion. Ever pondered that old existential chestnut "where is Hell?" Right now, it's in my maternity bra!

THAT is MASTITIS!!! 

Like most of my early intimate apparel, relations with the ladies have been strained since my tweens. They appeared early and abundantly. Like a politician's travel expenses, they refused to be reigned in and just continued to inflate! I shudder looking back at some of the outfits I shoe-horned the ladies into. Many a red carpet event I crashed looking like a pimped-up convertible with the airbags inflated. 

Photos taken in the early stages of my many pregnancies always advertised the fact because I looked like I'd smuggled a couple of cantaloupes down my top, lest I needed a snack midway through proceedings.  

At best, relations with my boobs have always been uncomfortable.

I'm fond of wearing workout gear day-in-day-out despite never stepping foot in a gym, and that probably doesn't help. While endlessly wearable, wipe-downable and capable of concealing a multitude of sins, Lycra also encourages painful side boob spillage and ingrown hairs in the nipple region. Ouch. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Madeleine West Actor (@msmadswest)

In recent years, I foolishly thought the ladies and I had finally achieved a tenuous truce, because as the number of babies went up, so the cup size miraculously went down. Admittedly, I never asked them to deflate so much. They now bear an uncanny resemblance to wind socks on a still day.

Nor did I know thwarting their attempts to escape through the armpits of sleeveless garments would require more scaffolding and reinforcements than you would find on the average building site — but such is the price of peace.  

From my first cross your heart bra, I knew those lady lumps were a cross we women were born to bear. Love them or loathe them, big or small, breasts will play a definitive role in  your life, and, equally, your wardrobe.

Unless, of course, you go commando and gradually let them reach for your knees.  Burning my bra has never been an option; I'm pretty unco at the best of times, so the last thing I need is any additional tripping hazards. 

I've never quite understood the fascination with 'the puppies', nor why some advertising wunderkind decided a woman's bumpy bits should sell everything from hardhats to luxury vehicles. Breasts are bewitching, bewildering, and downright back-breaking. Pert or ponderous, real or not-quite-the-set-mother-nature-gave-you, breasts never cease to captivate.

From that day in grade one, when Stinky Craig — of the overbite and undercut — showed me how '58008' typed into my Casio calculator and turned upside down spelt out 'BOOBS', things would never be the same.

Though I'm crying into my breast pump as I write, with a fevered brow, hot flushes, and wilting cabbage leaves awaiting in the crisper, I concede I do appreciate you, my ladies.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Madeleine West Actor (@msmadswest)

Sure, I'd rather you still looked at the stars rather than the ground. Sure, you have a history of hogging conversations (there's nothing worse than attempting a serious debate to find your companion isn't talking to you,  but to your chest. Rude!).

Sure, once let loose, you have to be rolled back up like a sleeping bag BUT I am grateful to you. Thank you for the service you have provided me, my family, and fans of the first Underbelly. I apologise for inflicting my ill-advised, ill-fitting outfits upon you. I apologise for the squishing, the squeezing, the muffin-topping. I'm sorry for the halter necks, the boob-tubes, the strategically placed dental floss masquerading as swimwear.

I'm so sorry for 2001… the whole year.  

I'd like to attempt a ceasefire. So, by way of an olive branch, I've bought you a new maternity bra. Heavy-duty, properly fitted, wide of strap, generous of cup, machine-washable,  sensual yet structurally sound. A classy, fully-fledged GROWN-UP-Type brassiere. I want you to feel supported. And for the first time in a long time, I don't feel like I'm strapped into a system of pulleys and levers straining against gravity thanks to a pair of bazoombas struggling to be set free.

Listen to Mamamia No Filter with Kate Langbroek, Mamamia's podcast that covers riveting stories and fascinating lives. Post continues below.

Yesterday, I was an unmanned dinghy juggling a couple of shipping containers using little more than French lace. Today, I'm a proud ship, mast straight and proud, sails full and firm. I walk tall, not like I'm smuggling two kilos of hamburger mince home in a string bag designed to carry one.  

So my ladies, I offer this elegant item of designer personal scaffolding as a white flag. If you could ease up on the present milk-duct traffic jam and just go with the flow, I promise to never again force upon you any outfit that could possibly prompt a headline like: 'her cup runneth over'.

Feature Image: Instagram @msmadswest / Getty.