A Girl...

Milestones and Stepping Stones

Thank you guys for all your advice. Today I'm wearing my lowest low-rise pants, below the belly, and although I can mostly breathe most of time, I'm pretty sure my butt fell out the back as I sprinted up a flight of stairs to catch a train this morning. If you're looking for me online this weekend, I won't be here but on eBay bidding on all of the Bella Bands and/or full-coverage underwear (new! and in the package! none of that "gently used" bullshit!).

In all that talk of maternity pants yesterday, though, I remembered a Very Special pair of Gap cargo pants that I bought on sale sometime back in the late nineties and wore for years until I realized that all of those buttons and tabs and zippers around the waist that I thought were just a quirky fashion detail? Are actually there to accomodate an expanding gut. I was wearing maternity pants all along and didn't even know it! Take that, sixteen-year-olds of 2008, who think they're all cutting-edge with their empire waist maternity smocks and stirrup pants!

The sad thing is that I didn't throw those pants away after I realized they were (a) maternity and (b) completely see-through (I throw NOTHING away; sad, I tell you!), but instead I saved them in the drawer where I also keep the overalls (overalls!) I wore in junior high (with only one strap attached and the other hanging down all cool-like, of course), because at some point I convinced myself that overalls would be the perfect maternity uniform, and hell if I'm going to throw out a perfectly good pair just because it's not 1993 anymore when I can instead keep them for fifteen years and then reintroduce them into my wardrobe when I am most in need of feeling cool and beautiful and sophisticated!

But alas, although so many other styles from the eighties and nineties have circled back around to smack us in the backs of our middle-aged heads, I haven't seen any overalls on the retail racks or the high schoolers recently, so I think maybe the time has come to let go of that dream. Especially since the carpenter look never really worked on my body and not once did I use that hammer loop on the pantleg. What a waste.

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The last time I was six weeks and five days pregnant, I was freezing my ass off at Stonehenge. That whole Thanksgiving trip to England was one long string of "Baby's first trip to Stonehenge!"..."Baby's first trip to Bath!"..."Baby's first trip to Salisbury Cathedral!" and by the end even Simon was getting sick of himself.

When we were in San Francisco a few weekends ago, we crossed the Bay Bridge to a cheer of "Baby's first trip to San Francisco!" and although that can hardly compete with a prehistoric pile of magical druid rocks, it's a milestone nonetheless.

We're only a few weeks into this whole pregnancy thing, but I already fear I'm entering that annoying all-baby-all-the-time territory, and that's not my intention. Right now, though, I think I'm still squeezing every ounce out of these early weeks because I didn't get the opportunity last time. Beck asked me yesterday if I'd let everyone know when I'd officially passed the point at which I miscarried last time, and when I did the math, I realized that I was only a week away from that date. Next Thursday, May 1, my birthday, I will breathe another little sigh of relief in what will be a long chain of sighs that started three weeks ago and will continue until I die.