I was quite prepared for my feet to swell in pregnancy, especially since the last few weeks were in the middle of the hottest summer we’ve had since I don’t know when! I lived in my (smartish, leather) flip flops for the last six weeks of being pregnant because I couldn’t fit anything else on my massive feet!

In the week after Toby was born my feet swelled even more and I didn’t wear shoes at all most of the time. Then the puffiness went down…but none of my shoes fit!! My feet had grown in pregnancy and as the weeks and months have gone on they haven’t gone back to their pre-pregnancy size. They aren’t just longer they are wider too. Apparently the hormone relaxin which your body produces during pregnancy to allow your pelvis to stretch so you can give birth also affects the rest of the body and can cause the bones in your feet to spread too. In some women they shrink back after giving birth but in others, like me (and a few other people who I was talking to about this on Twitter the other night) the feet stay permanently bigger.

This makes me very, very sad. I was prepared for my pre-pregnancy clothes not to fit me but to take my shoes away just seems plain mean. I have always worn size 5 shoes since I was a teenager. It didn’t matter if I was fat or thin, it didn’t matter if I had blown my latest diet and my favourite jeans didn’t fit – I could always rely on a standard, size 5 shoe fitting perfectly!

So now I have one pair of trainers that I bought after Toby was born, my four pairs of Converse which still fit (as long as I don’t have to walk very far) and a couple of pairs of flip flops. And the bottom of my wardrobe is full of shoes that are too small. I even bought a shoe stretcher in the hope of giving my old shoes a new lease of life but, although I have managed to stretch some shoes a bit they still aren’t as comfortable as they were before. Amongst those shoes that don’t fit are about five pairs of dance shoes that I have worn in various shows, and will need again at some point so I’m either going to have to squeeze my feet into them and suffer or fork out for new ones, which won’t do my bank balance much good!

The shoes I am most upset about though are my wedding shoes. I hardly ever wear high heels and I wanted something that was a bit different, comfortable, and shoes that I would wear again. In the end I went to Shoes of Prey, an Australian company that has an online design tool where you choose everything from style, heel height, trim, decoration and colour and they make your shoes for you. You can even order different sizes for each foot if you need to! I LOVE my wedding shoes and even with stretching they are still a bit too small. I’m sure it won’t stop me wearing them on special occasions but they were so comfortable before. (And they were very expensive, by my standards for shoes at least, so I definitely won’t be stopping wearing them if I can help it!) Here they are….oh I could weep!

I suppose I should just take this as a great opportunity to go shoe shopping…and I’ve already started by buying these beauties from Livie & Luca!

Did your feet grow during pregnancy? Did they ever go back to their pre-pregnancy size or are you stuck with big feet after pregnancy?!