wardrobe crisis
so we attended a beautiful wedding last night! it turned out to be a really fun event, but i went to put on the dress i had been planning to wear, i could barely get it zipped. when i finally wrestled the thing closed, it wasn’t pretty.
here i am in that frock, which happens to be the largest dress i own.
you can see how thrilled i am
you may not be able to appreciate the fact that this ann taylor number was straining at the seams, but trust me. there was no room for dinner, wedding cake, or — you know — breaths of air. this was not going to fly.
now, i follow a lot of blogs. and lately, one of my absolute favorite categories of blogs is THE PREGNANT BLOG. i avoided these like the plague during my long [long] TTC phase, but now they are the first ones i hit in my reader each day. i love hearing what each phase of pregnancy is like from multiple perspectives, and i’ve even gone back to check out what was going on during the first trimesters of some of these lovely ladies.
expectations vs reality again . . .
the thing is, without realizing it, i began to create expectations about my OWN body-transformation experience based on the others. some ladies were running half-marathons in the first tri. some are still in regular jeans at 18 weeks! others seem to just get more gorgeous as the weeks go on. this is NOTHING against these ladies — these three blogs are some of my absolute favorites and these women are just openly sharing their experiences, just as i am!
but somehow, i got it in my head that you’re not supposed to show until a super-cute, well-defined baby bump just SHOWS UP one day at around 17 weeks or so. even with a 3 lb weight gain [as of last monday], i just wasn’t expecting a wardrobe crisis. not NOW. not yet.
but everyone is different. and there is SO MUCH going on in my body right now.
come on — i mean, the kid has FINGERS!
major hormonal changes, GI umm let’s just say issues, and a rapidly growing uterus [apparently it’s gone from small pear –> grapefruit status]. and yes — i’ve been eating lots, but it’s been what i truly wanted and with nausea and aversions sometimes that meant some less ‘healthy’ choices.
in the end, the wonderful sue wound up inviting me over to shop her closet to borrow a dress [in her words: there’s really no point in buying something now when you’re just going to get bigger!]. she steered me expertly towards this anthro frock, and i felt a million times better as soon as i put it on.
it even had pockets, and the lush red color was so much fun!
in certain angles [like the 2 shots above], i look pretty much the same as usual. but from the side things weren’t so smooth:
josh took one look at this and said i was sticking it out, but i SWEAR i wasn’t trying to
in truth, i don’t think this photo tells the whole story either [i think this might have just been . . . lunch], but IT IS WHAT IT IS. everyone is different, and every pregnancy is different. my sister-in-law told me that with her first pregnancy, people were calling her out at 7 weeks. others make it 6 months!
in conclusion
i have officially decided that i am not going to stress about these changes anymore, or make arbitrary comparisons. the changes mean that major things are happening in my body [as it should be!], and if i continue to exercise and take care of myself, nothing catastrophic is going to happen. the most important thing is that i continue to grow a healthy baby and if perhaps for me that means extra fluff along the way, then so be it. i already know that my hormonal systems don’t work exactly like the textbooks say they should, so why should pregnancy be any different?
and in the end, the wedding was lots of fun and josh and i had such a good time just being together.
and i loved wearing the red dress, mini-bump and all.
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