Maternity Clothes...Oh the Indignity of it All!

There comes a time in every pregnant woman's life when she realizes the "rubber-band - in- place of- the -top- button- on- the- jeans- trick" no longer works.

Today was that day, for me.

Oh, I'd been preparing for this moment, but embracing the reality of it was still distant, or so I thought. I have been buying maternity clothes and ordering things from catalogs for a couple of weeks now. But I didn't think I'd have to start actually wearing some of the clothing quite this soon.

It actually started last night. I was getting ready for bed and put on my usual comfy pair of all cotton PJ bottoms which are a real thin cotton material that's almost silk-like. I love them. Once I got them up and over the hips I noticed they seemed a tad, well ok, a lot tighter than normal. But I reasoned that I'd just laundered them, and of course, I must have accidentally washed them in hot rather than cold! That's it! The reasoning powers of the pregnant mind are astounding.

So I then sat down on the floor to sort through some CD's and I hear something that sounds like a tear or a rip. I look all around me and notice that the carpet has not torn, and everything else in the room appears normal. Hmmmm I wonder what that could have been? It's about that time that I feel a draft on my left hip and I run my hand down my side and my finger suddenly stops when I hit skin! My jaw drops and I prepare myself to look at what must be just a tiny tiny tear in the PJ's....slowly I look down at my left hip....and there I see not a tiny hole, not even a moderate size hole, but one I could put my foot through!

Tears sprang from my eyes and I literally cried over the hole in the side of my PJ bottoms. I tried to tell myself that I could just sew them up and they'd be good as new! Then I actually took them off and looked at the tear and at the seams themselves and it became quite clear that my dear pajamas had been stressed to the breaking point, quite literally. So I sat on the floor for a while longer mourning the loss of the pretty blue and lavender pajamas.

Out of respect for the dearly departed pajamas, I didn't put on a brand new pair of maternity jammies I'd bought. Nope, I slept in my knickers and a t-shirt. *sniffle*

I had to get up early this morning to be at my orientation for the Marine Animal Lifeline group (I'll post about that tomorrow, I'm still trying to get those big sad seal eyes outta my head) and didn't much think about what to wear. So I just threw on a pair of jeans and a blouse. I knew we'd be getting around smelly, stinky, dirty stuff so I didn't put much thought into what I was going to wear. So I pull up my jeans and for some strange reason the jeans are a bit too tight too! What on earth is going on? This has to be a conspiracy by my clothing against me. So I did what any smart girl who's jeans are too tight would do. I flopped on the bed and sucked it all in, in an attempt to button that damned top button. But the button refused to be buttoned. What on earth was I going to do?

Just then I had an epiphany! Well, ok it was a borrowed epiphany of sorts. Back when I was reading the Jenny McCarthy pregnancy book; "Belly Laughs" I remembered her talking about her jeans being too tight, but yet like me, she was not ready to abandon normal great jeans for pseudo-jeans that had a whacking great stretchy-unnactractive material at the top. Let us live with our illusions just a bit longer, please. So being the brilliant blonde she is, she got a huge thick rubber-band and looped it through the button hole on her jeans and around the button!

Brilliant! My problem was solved. Now all I had to do was find a rubber band. That proved a wee bit difficult but I did manage to dig one out of the bottom of my sewing box. Problem solved, my jeans were now fastened and I was ready to head out the door.

The rubber-band didn't fail me through the orientation and training this morning, nor did it have a problem through my two-hour nap this afternoon, nor did it show any stress while I was down in Old Orchard Beach looking at some homes.

The drive home however was an entirely different matter.

I'm cruising along Route 1 and enjoying my CD, the windows rolled down, sea breeze blowing in and then......SNAP! Ouch...........bloody hell I've been shot! Who the hell would shoot a pregnant semi-blonde chick cruising down the road in a Volvo with the Buffy the Vampire [the musical episode] CD playing? There is a searing pain in my rib cage, just below my right boob. I pull over expecting to see blood gushing and look down and there's nothing. I lift up my shirt (ok so modesty was not first and foremost on my mind at the time, and gee, what's so attractive about industrial sized boobs being supported by a bra big enough to contain what appear to be watermelons on steriods?) and there is no gaping wound, no blood gushing forth...

No, what there is however is a clearly busted rubber band resting comfortably across my tummy.

So now I sit here and post about this in the most comfortable pair of pants I have ever worn in my entire life. And be damned with the unattractive stretchy stuff at the top.