Before I got pregnant, I had been given fair warning that pregnancy is the great equalizer. No matter how beautiful you are, how smart, how pulled together (and hell, why not, I’ll take credit for being in the upper percentiles of all three), pregnancy does not discriminate when it comes to snatching away your dignity. Friends had warned me that the pregnant woman’s body is frequently laid bare (quite literally) for many to see. Bloggers had regaled me with frightening tales of class and decorum being tossed out with the proverbial baby AND the bathwater. And now, my friends, I can tell you that I’m starting to understand what others had warned me about.
I’m not quite far enough along to have experienced the more humbling of pregnancy experiences. But the beauty of the nine month gestation period is that you’re broken in slowly to the many indignities of it all. There’s the initial exam, where it’s bad enough that you find yourself facing hot pad-covered stirrups, let alone encountering the rather long object that will enter…well…you know where.
There’s the urine sample at every doctor’s appointment. Before this journey, I thought urine samples were things people only talked about in hushed tones. On my second doctor’s appointment, while I was waiting in the reception area, one of the nurses loudly inquired whether I had provided a urine sample yet. I rushed up to the desk, red flush spreading up my neck and across my cheeks.
“Not yet,” I whispered. The nurse was unphased by my decorum. She replied just as loudly as she’d begun.
“OK, well you’ve got to do it before you leave. If you don’t have to pee now, you can do it after your appointment.”
I retreated back to my seat with my head down. There was a MAN in the waiting area! What if he had heard?! No matter that he was seated next to his very pregnant wife, and had by this point undoubtedly heard—and seen—much worse.
This week another piece of my humility endured a slow unraveling as I discovered with each passing day that it was getting harder and harder to fit into my pants and skirts. I know that losing your waistline is par for the pregnancy course, but I think any woman can agree that having your shape morph from that of a glass bottle to that of an aluminum can is a tough pill to swallow. My pants had slowly been getting tighter and tighter, my skirts no longer agreeing to zip all the way up. And today? Today was the day. I could no longer force the button on my khakis to close. So I reached for the best available solution: a safety pin. The only thing preventing the world from seeing my skivvies was a thin metal tine taking on a burden no safety pin should be asked to shoulder. Try as I did to focus on more serious issues, much of my day was spent wondering if my zipper would hold up, now that its friend the button was taking some time off.
And so, I’ve resigned myself to purchasing this:
Here’s hoping that I’ll appear as glowing, toothy-grinned and ecstatic as these women are when I wrap this gauze-like piece of security around my growing belly each day.
Tags: I'm going to be a mom?!
