Thursday, October 1, 2015

Maternity Pants and Mouthfuls of Carbs


What can I say, my love for alliterations hasn’t gone away even with the changes going on in my life right now. Today’s post is more personal than others mostly because as a writer, I need to get these words out, and also I find the further I get into this whole pregnancy thing the less I really care what people know. Now don’t worry, I have no want to get graphic details of pregnancy, childbirth, and all those other gross things (sorry I still have a hard time seeing it as a beautiful thing), which leads me into one of the points of this post: I’m still snarky and cynical as ever.
“Oh you’re glowing.”

Glowing? Yeah, that could be the excess oil or sweat on my face but I’m definitely not “glowing.” In fact, I’m going to put this out there: pregnancy  the first trimester sucks (look I caught myself, aren’t you all proud?). Suddenly you lose all control of what is happening to your body and become zapped of all energy. But hey it’s so miraculous that you’re growing this human being inside of you, right? You mean the alien being that is stealing my blood? Sure. Don’t get me wrong, I’m so incredibly excited to meet the little nugget and shape it into a contributing member of society… I just need to get past the first part: this whole pregnancy thing.

That leads me to my next point: it’s time to own this whole pregnancy thing, gross or not.

When I was a teenager and hit puberty my body suddenly decided to stock pile fat. From the age of 16 until I was 21, I was considered “overweight.” Don’t get me wrong, I was never unhealthy; played sports all throughout high school and college and ate somewhat healthy. Nevertheless, there was also an extra couple of pounds that just didn’t make me feel comfortable. After college I made some lifestyle changes (most notably gave up eating meat) and ended up losing 40 pounds. Later on I even became a fitness instructor, teaching others strength and core training.

Fast forward to our decision to have a child and that realization that “holy shit I’m going to gain back most of that weight.” And sure enough, I started to gain weight. A lot of it had to do with the fact that the only thing that seemed to quell my morning sickness was carbs (and let’s face it, once I found out I was pregnant I turned into the carb version of cookie monster). Then I hit the mark where suddenly none of my pants fit. Well they “fit” but that button was begging for its life after a while.

I started to wear dresses, skirts, yoga pants, and other clothing options that had “give,” all to avoid the dreaded maternity clothes. Then finally I broke down and got some maternity pants and you know what? They’re kind of amazing. Actually, not kind of, they ARE amazing. It’s to the point that I honestly would have no shame wearing these even after my pregnancy.

Even with all my snarkiness, cynicism, and general wish to avoid anything cute and/or sappy I am very excited for this next stage. Still, won’t be posting any sonogram pictures or doing one of those gods awful maternity shoots – seriously the only pictures of me that would actually be reminiscent of my pregnancy would include me in yoga pants, eating bread, and watching Arrow on Netflix. So you know what, I’m gonna gain weight and wear comfy pants and I’m going to milk every part of it because in the end I’m going to have an awesome child that I get to corrupt… I mean love and nurture.