Little Stretchy Pants, How I Love Thee

That title is misleading.  I don’t, in fact, love thee.  I will eventually, but not right now.  I’m not talking about yoga pants or anything like that.  I’m not one of those people who wear yoga pants like they’re real clothes simply because they’re too lazy to button jeans.  For the record, that is pop culture’s reference, not mine.  I wear yoga pants to work out in.  That is all.  I just can’t walk around all day like I’m wearing pajamas.  Can’t do it.  If you see me in yoga pants in the middle of the day and I’m not working out, that means I’m sick and you should probably keep your distance. No, the little stretchy pants in question today are maternity pants.  Maternity jeans to be exact.  Jeans that my husband’s friend Jake calls ‘rubber band pants.’  They are in my future, for better or for worse.  From what I’ve read I should already be shopping for them.  Why can’t they do their own shopping? However, I do not as of yet have a need for them, even though all the websites say it’s time.  On the size and weight scale I’ve never really followed the norm.  I’m usually a good bit smaller than the articles say I’m supposed to be.  They also say that you show earlier with each subsequent pregnancy.  I have yet to take that one as fact.  Because in my case, it is a lot of bunk. It’s not that I try not to show or anything.   I’m not one of those pregorexics that you can now read about.  I mean, I’m vain, but damn.  I’m not that bad.  I might consider sacrificing some of my own health for vanity, but not someone else’s.  So the guideline for your first trimester’s weight gain is between 0 and 5 pounds.  I have lost two.  Usually that is common with severe morning sickness or hyperemesis gravidarum.  I have had neither of these.  At the most, I get a little queasy. I’m not going to go into great detail about this one for this post, but I’ll just touch on it enough to say I lost weight for the first trimester because there was never enough food to eat at our house.  Now we all know that you aren’t eating for two, just to add 300 calories onto your normal diet.  I wasn’t even able to eat for one.  I logged my meals into a calorie counter and journal for a week.  It told me that if I ate like that every day that in five weeks I would have lost fifteen pounds.  The whys and the hows will have to come about later.  The point is, no food equals weight loss and in this case, equals anemia as well.  Again, not getting into that yet, just stating. So as I would read my daily pregnancy anecdote I started to see it talk about how your clothes might be getting snug or how it’s about time to start shopping for maternity clothes.  Then there were tips about how to make your regular clothes last longer, tricks with pony tail holders and the like.  At that point it didn’t look like I was going to need any tricks at all for a while.  I know that every pregnancy is different, blah blah blah, but after three other kids I kinda felt like at least some of what I was reading should apply to me.  But it never really has so I don’t know why I was surprised. Googled images of my particular week would come back with ultrasounds and women turned sideways sporting small baby bellies.  How much had these women weighed to begin with?  I figured since I weighed a good bit less starting out this time that I would show earlier.  No, that’s not how I roll apparently.  I reminded myself when I started thinking like that that there would be plenty of time to look pregnant, so much so that I would start to wish I wasn’t.   Y’know how that in between time at the end of the first trimester where it looks like you just took one too many trips to the buffet?  It was nowhere near me. However, today I am delighted to report that my jeans feel a little uncomfortable today.  I have the top button undone while I am at my desk.  That says to me that it’s time to wash the maternity clothes and assess the damage.  Almost all of my maternity clothes are clothes I have worn with each of my pregnancies dating back five years some of them.  That doesn’t sound like a lot of time for jeans, really, but when you consider the increased frequency with which you wear maternity clothes you start to get a feel for just how worn some of this stuff is.  I throw jeans out when the inner thighs start to look like I’m wearing chaps.  Not before.  I can stretch a pair of maternity jeans for as long as I need to.  There is one pair of jeans that I have worn with each pregnancy and they are still in really good shape.  They are usually the first pair I’ll put on because they do not look like maternity at all.  I find that to be a plus.  One other article that has lasted three pregnancies so far is my black tummy sleeve, Motherhood Maternity’s answer to the Bella Band.  Still hanging in there.  I may need a white one this go-round, too.  My style doesn’t really change.  I’m very much solid color tee and jeans.  It’s classic and it doesn’t go out of style.  Luckily. I’ve never really been able to go the cute maternity route.  My job doesn’t really accommodate little dresses and the like.  If I can’t drive a forklift in it, I can’t wear it to work, which is where I spend seventy percent of my waking hours anyway.  So I mostly need utility items, jeans and long and short-sleeved tees.  It works, but it’s not always what I want to wear.  For such basic stuff, I go to Motherhood Maternity.  It’s the most affordable maternity store that I know of, especially when you catch a sale. Now I would love to go shop at A Pea in the Pod or some other ritzy maternity place, but, seriously, if I don’t have the money to successfully slake my own hunger then I don’t have it to purchase a $75 white t-shirt.  Don’t think I don’t hate it, too, ‘cause I do.  I would love to be one of those enviable pregnant women who always look just so, but I’m not.  Not only because I can’t afford it, but because I have three other small children to wrangle and I would end up with snot on the back of my knees and muddy footprints on my thighs.  Don’t laugh; it’s happened. I won’t continue to whine about the fact that I can’t afford maternity clothes.  I have some already, I just don’t know the state of them.  And for some reason I was just reminded that I also have a pair of overalls in that group.  It took two whole pregnancies for me to get over my disgust at overalls, but damn they’re comfortable.  I’m hoping this time around to take a page out of Girl’s Gone Child blogger Rebecca Woolf’s book and get myself into a unitard.  There would have to be pictures.  I don’t know if I’d be able to pull it off like her.  She had it going on, even pregnant with twins. There are so many different types of maternity pants, but I can’t bring myself to wear most of them.  I do not do the full panel or half panel as I think it looks ridiculous.  No matter what you’ll have that indentation of the waist band somewhere near the middle to top of your stomach.  It’s more embarrassing than a visible panty line.  I also refuse to wear what they call the Secret Fit belly style.  You’re hard pressed to find pants at Motherhood Maternity that do not have this feature.  It’s like full panel but it goes up so high that it might as well be a romper that you’re wearing, not pants.  The one time I tried some on I found them to be extremely uncomfortable.  Where the denim meets the panel started just south of my hips and was constantly trying to work its way down.  Almost like wearing underwear with elastic that is no longer elastic.  Then on top of that, there was no way to drag them back up again.  No belt loops, nothing.  Maybe it was the weight of the denim that did it, but either way they were not my style.  I stick to the no-panel and just the demi panel.  Waistbands where waistbands are supposed to go…for the most part. So for the first time this go-round, rubber band pants are on the horizon.  Oh, I’m 13 weeks pregnant.  Did I forget to mention?