There comes a time in any new mom’s life when she is sick and tired of wearing pants with a stretchy elastic waistband that goes up to the bottom of her boobs. For me, that day was today. My daughter is 10 weeks old, and while I’ve lost some baby weight, I am nowhere near fitting into my old pants. Those elastic bands were such a comfortable relief to me when I bought them 9 weeks into my pregnancy. While they’re still comfortable, that band now molds my little pouch into a perfect rounded arc, making me look about 4 months pregnant -definitely not the look I’m going for!
I have been able to squeeze into some of my pre-pregnancy leggings, but they’re often a little snug. The only non-maternity leggings I can count on are my trusty Lululemons (and for the record, Lululemon is in no way sponsoring this post, I’m just obsessed with my leggings). I wore them for the first 8 months of my pregnancy and still wear each pair at least once a week. However, due to frequent wear and my husband’s very considerate but disastrous efforts to do the laundry (he does not understand the nuances of caring for my Lulus), they are in bad shape. They’re covered in pills to the point where I was embarrassed to wear them out of my house. So I decided to do what any rational person would do, I waited for my baby to fall asleep, broke out a disposable razor and a lint roller, and shaved my leggings.
If you’ve never done this before, it is incredibly therapeutic. Little by little, the pills disappear, leaving the leggings even softer than they were the day I bought them. And it got me thinking about how to me, these are much more than a pair of super comfy leggings that make my butt look amazing.
I remember the day I bought those leggings. I was six weeks and six days pregnant. I had the most horrible cramps throughout my day at work, and I got to the point where I was nervous. Well, more nervous than usual anyway. I called my doctor and scheduled an ultrasound, truly expecting the worst. It was a half day at school, and for the last hour of a particularly dry in-service, my wonderful, caring teacher friends created a drinking game to make sure I had enough water in my bladder for my very first ultrasound. No one invents spur-of-the-moment non-alcoholic drinking games like teachers! We drank on every educational acronym, and with a full bladder and a slightly lighter mood, I headed for the doctor and braced myself for terrible news about the baby I hadn’t even let myself think of as a baby yet.
Those early weeks of pregnancy are funny. You take the test, you see the lines, you tell the people closest to you (or not, depending on what your comfortable with), but you don’t actually believe there’s a baby in there. There is so much uncertainty and so much newness. My belly was still flat and I wasn’t having many symptoms, how could I be growing a person? It seemed impossible that so much could be going on inside me without me feeling much different than I had 6 weeks before? The only difference I noticed was a ridiculous amount of bloating that made even my biggest pants uncomfortable. I was well-versed in the statistics of everything that could possibly go wrong thanks to obsessive Googling. So I sat in the waiting room calmly, telling myself that it was only our first try to have a baby, that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, and that no matter what happened, it would be okay eventually. A kind tech called me into the darkened room, and trying very hard not to pee myself, I laid back on the elevated table and took a deep breath.
The surprisingly warm gel squirted on my belly, the wand rolled, and I looked at the screen to see....a dark and empty-looking oblong shape surrounded by white that I assumed was organs and bones. “It doesn’t look like there’s anything in there,” I said quietly, but the tech smiled and pointed to a tiny, white bean shape protruding from the otherwise flat white line above the darkness. “There is,” she said happily. “There’s your baby! And see that little flickering? That’s your baby’s heartbeat!”
Suddenly, all of the emotions I’d held in all day were gone, with the exception of relief and joy, and I burst into very different tears than the ones I had been anticipating. This baby was real. It had a heartbeat! It was amazing! And once that reality hit, I knew I had to buy new pants. I couldn’t crush that little baby! It needed room to grow! So I went to the nearest Lululemon, whispered to the saleswoman that I was pregnant, and was in a fitting room with super comfy, zero compression leggings before I knew it. I wore the leggings out of the store, smiling that secretive smile you only get when you’re newly pregnant. I was finally able to breathe for more than one reason.
So much has changed since that day last April. My little girl is asleep in my arms as I type, making those cute little baby grunts in her sleep. She’s come a long way from that little bean on the screen! But there is one consistency -those leggings are the comfiest things I own, and thanks to a little help from my disposable razor, my lint roller, and Google, they look as good as new!
Before and After!
Comments