Can confirm that bottom growth is a real and painful thing. If you’re the kind of person who wears skinny jeans regularly (looking at u fashionable goth/punk trans ppl), here’s a tip for your first few months of T: don’t.
Bottom growth will be overly sensitive and stick out of the hood more than usual, and anytime the inside of ur jeans rubs against it it will a) hurt and b) make u horny.
This can be a problem in general, but especially if u have bottom dysphoria and being reminded of ur junk can make u dysphoric, and/or if ur ace like me and being horny can be a very confusing and annoying experience (I know this is not every aces experience but I had never really had a sex drive or arousal before T and it was very distressing at first. Still ace tho)
Oh also: microdosing can be great for slowing changes and letting ur body adapt more gradually (It can be very helpful for more gradual and natural sounding voice changes), however, it will not let you avoid certain changes entirely. Microdosing will not prevent bottom growth from happening, or any other changes you may want to avoid. Unfortunately what changes you get are genetic and there is no way to pick and chose which you get. A lower dose of T can make it go more slowly to help you get used to it more gradually or so that if there are changes you really want to avoid you can try and stop before those advance too far, but it can’t prevent changes from happening entirely, certainly not specific ones. And certainly not bottom growth, which is one of the first changes to start and one of the least reversible.
(I don’t say this because I think that was what op was trying to say abt microdosing at all btw, I’m just trying to clarify because I remember when I started T and was researching low dose T, I saw some people on online forums hoping it would allow them to avoid bottom growth for example, and it won’t, so I wanted to clear that up)
Also re: top surgery, the first time I saw my chest post-op my brain flipped and I got so dizzy I nearly passed out. This is also relatively normal and okay. I think my brain just kind of freaked out seeing my body so different from what we were used to and also oh yeah with a big scar running across it. Its okay, that doesn’t mean you regret it either. I think sometimes ur brain just needs a minute to catch up and realize ‘oh wait this isn’t a traumatic injury this is what my chest is supposed to look like’. Once I had seen my chest a few times and let my brain get used to it I was absolutely thrilled and loved it (and still do). I also had a panic attack the night before my surgery because I was afraid of the anesthesia. Again, doesnt mean I made the wrong decision.
I think a lot of trans ppl don’t know that surgery can just be an emotionally intense experience, and yeah can also mess with ur hormones a bit (another consequence of both hormonal stuff and the stress of surgery is I got really bad acne for awhile after surgery) and so you might feel all kinds of weird or stressed directly before or after. It’s okay. Make sure u have supportive ppl around u to take care of u, and wait until ur body has had a bit of time to heal and renormalize before u start panicing over if u made the right choice or not. You’ll probably be sleeping for most of the first week anyway. Give ur body and ur nerves a break for a bit.
