I’m telling you this because you’ll never see it. It only happens when no one else is around. At the end of a long day, I tuck my shirt into my bra, stop fighting the downward sag of my gangsta maternity pants, and let it all hang out. And there is a lot of all to hang. Before being massively pregnant, I’d roll my eyes and snort when I saw people letting their bellies hang out. Now I embrace their fashion statement (thankfully, only in the confines of my own home.)
It doesn’t stop there. I drink hot chocolate just so I can eat the marshmallows: TWO packets, not a lot of water, and the giant marshmallows. Those mini-marshmallows are for amateurs. I even pause when the hot chocolate gets low and add more marshmallows. Heavenly goodness better than bags of cookies – especially since I am too tired to chew.
I sit in our new grown-up car (my husband traded in his pickup for a station wagon – a story I’ll tell you all someday) and let the buttwarmer work its magic on my aching muscles. I don’t care if it’s 80 out. On cold days I turn the seat warmer to max, blast the heat and then roll down the windows because I like cold air on my face. It makes me comfortable and increasingly I don’t really give a rat’s patooty about anything else.
I take advantage of having the courtesy clerk at the market carry my groceries to my car. I want to play the pregnancy card as long as I can. By next month, you’ll see some poor guy trailing after me toting my pack of gum and then I’ll ask him to help wedge me into the driver’s seat. I know no shame.
I find myself on a daily basis doing things that I swore I would NEVER do when I was pregnant. Even more often, I find myself NOT doing the things I promised myself I would. Walk every day? Do my yoga? Absolutely! Not. One of the DVD’s I purchased is actually still shrink-wrapped. Didn’t I point fingers at those undisciplined slobs who pigged out during pregnancy? Put organics in my body! Eat pure for the baby! Sure, all the way up to my first trip to Taco Bell.
Obviously I am nowhere close to the perfect pregnant lady. Moral? This marshmallow-padded path of good intentions gone wrong? This is my trial run, a state of being I have to get used to fast. Just watch this space come April for the new theme of my column: “I Swore I Would Never, Part Deux: Surprisingly Easy Compromises I Made in My Child’s First Year”. It’ll be a sensation…because all the moms are doing it. Right?
