Just some fun pregnancy T-shirts I’ve found. I don’t have any… yet.
Because his father is and I imagine he might be, too:
Because it sounds better than what I really do some days, which is nap, try to work, eat and nap some more:
I’m not, but I love Rosie the Riveter and this shirt cracks me up:
I have been feeling flutters for a couple of weeks now. At first, I wasn’t sure if I knew what I was feeling or if I was imagining it. The first time (and most times since then), I was laying on my stomach and felt these little tap-tap-taps where my belly was pressed to the mattress. I guess I was squishing baby. Hmm.
Since then, I’ve felt it almost every day. Usually when I’m in bed, either falling asleep or just waking up. When everything is quiet and still, it happens: tap-tap-tap.
It’s a strange feeling, like nothing I’ve ever felt. Difficult to describe, even. I’ve heard it described as butterfly wings (poetic) and hunger pains (biological) and gas (just gross), but it’s not like any of those. It feels like what it is-- something foreign and alien living inside me.
Sometimes that thought creeps me out a bit. I know I’m supposed to love every minute of pregnancy and declare it to be a miracle, but I don’t always (or even usually) feel that way. It’s hard to get used to this notion of hosting another living thing inside my body. These mild flutters are a bit disconcerting, I’m not sure how the full-on assault of kicks and punches will affect me. I suppose I’ll get used to it and look forward to those moments (but not when I’m trying to sleep!0, but for now, it’s all a bit new and strange.
And as I write this, I feel it again: tap-tap-tap.
Hello, baby. Hope everything is okay in there.
My first pregnancy picture.
It’s a fact that we women spend most of our lives sucking it in. “It” meaning our stomachs. Whether a size 2 or a size 22, most women suck it in without even thinking about it. We’ve been conditioned since childhood to pull those stomach muscles in lest we look fat. The woman who doesn’t suck it in is either very self-confident, very drunk or very skinny.
I am neither a size 2 (ha!), nor a size 22 (though I might be by the time this baby is born), but I’m as guilty of sucking it in as any other woman who grew up reading Seventeen and graduated to Cosmopolitan. No matter what size I’ve ever been-- and it’s been quite a range over the years-- it’s been an unconscious reaction to pull in my stomach when I stand up. But now, at just over sixteen weeks pregnant, I have discovered something:
I can’t suck it in anymore.
I know, I know. I’m pregnant and I don’t have to suck it in. What can I say? Old habits die hard and without the obvious baby bump, I just felt fat.
Even though I’ve only gained 7 pounds so far, it’s been at least two weeks since I could suck it all in. There is a noticeable bump below my bellybutton now and there is just no sucking it in. But up until a few days ago, I still had the ability to suck in my upper stomach. It didn’t really make much of a difference, but there was some comfort in that reflexive motion that let me know I was still in control of my body, even if there are bizarre changes going on inside.
No more. Baby is in charge now. He probably always was, but at least I had the illusion of control for a little while.
I bought my first real pair of maternity pants yesterday. I know I’m pregnant, but that single act kind of slammed it home for me. I’m only going to get bigger. I strapped on the fake baby bump (which simulates three months of additional baby growth) and I was huge. Ginormous. Frightening. I’m not ready for that.
I guess I’ll have to get ready, since apparently that’s what I’ll look like in three months. Right now, I’m just trying to get used to the idea that I can’t suck it in anymore.
I can’t find maternity clothes anywhere. I have been looking for over two weeks now and have so far determined that babies in southeast Virginia must be delivered by storks. How else to explain the fact that maternity clothes are as rare as rainbows around here. So far, I have tried Old Navy, Target, JCPenney, Dillard’s and even Sears. I was willing to skip the department stores and hit the maternity stores except the Motherhood Maternity in the mall I shop at most frequently has closed. Seriously. A three-story mall that has not one single maternity store but has no fewer than four stores dedicated to babies and toddlers. Unbelievable.
Only one local Old Navy has a maternity section and it consists of a few racks of stretchy pants that look more like workout gear than anything I’d wear in public, a few pairs of maternity jeans with that ridiculous band at the top (no under the waist jeans) and a few tops that don’t look any more maternity than anything else in their store. I found exactly three racks of maternity clothes at Target and the only thing that wasn’t hideous were the maternity tanks. So I now own one maternity tank top to wear under the non-maternity tops I own (which came from Old Navy, actually). JCPenney and Sears had a few measly racks of picked-over clothes in bad styles and patterns. Dillard’s doesn’t even have a maternity section.
I still haven’t checked Macy’s and a store search revealed there are a couple of local Motherhood Maternity stores, including an outlet in Williamsburg. There are a few “maternity boutiques” in Virginia Beach, which means over-priced clothes in sizes I can’t wear. There is always the mail order option and I have thrown a bunch of stuff into shopping carts at Old Navy/The Gap and Motherhood. But I hate mail order-- nothing ever fits and I end up returning things and paying postage. I’d much rather have the option to try things on and take them home now rather than having to wait a week to find out I need a different size/style.
I’m glad I started hunting for maternity clothes early. I am still squeezing into a few pairs of pants and most of my tops fit fine, but I’m not more than a week or so away from absolutely needing maternity pants. I hate having to buy clothes I’m only going to wear for a few months-- especially since I’m going to go from summer to fall/winter maternity clothes, but wearing yoga pants or sweats in public is just not an option.
Of all the possible complications of pregnancy I might have imagined before I got pregnant, I never thought finding maternity clothes would be one of them. Sigh.
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