Fat

This whole first trimester experience is absolutely for jerks. Aside from the joys of numbing exhaustion, unpredictable nausea, the emotional fortitude of a toddler, and gassiness that would make a frat boy proud, the whole pants thing is a damned indignity.


My pants don't fit. No pants fit. My regular pants are a joke. I'm certainly getting Lora's money's worth out of the belly band she got me and I've given up all attempts at buttoning or even zipping my jeans in the morning. It's not just the belly, either. My hips are becoming another obstacle the pants can't surmount. I've always been about as narrow from the hips down as a person with a huge rack can be without tipping over so having hips at all is an interesting development. If I get a respectable set of hips and a slightly larger ass out of this I'll take back all complaints.


It's not just the fit. Having a waistband held together with a rubber band screaming for relief that's cutting into the gas that will not shift does not feel good on the belly. Chicken dinner may be deformed because there's no room in there for him.


I won't even look at maternity pants because I know they'll be too big. My belly still only looks like the recipient of too many french fries and there's no way I'm buying maternity clothes in size XS. I don't think there's going to be anything XS about me in the coming months and at this point XS will be too big.


( I know, boo effing hoo Hope, your size fours are too tight for you these days. What a crying shame. Shut up.)


I tried just wearing a bigger size in regular pants but that was not better. While there was a comfortable fit at the waist, they were like parachute pants everywhere else. I was very comfy but I'm sure I looked all slouchy and ridiculous. At work.


So seriously, what's a girl to do? The struggle to squeeze myself into my regular old pants is making me start the day feeling pissed off and disgusted. Can I just give up and start wearing stretchy pants? Not sweatpants necessarily. Don't they make pants out of some kind of stretchy material that a girl can wear to work? I know these pants exist. I see women wearing them. Do I have to go somewhere like Rainbow Shop of Dress Barn to find them?


When I was in college, the trendy thing to wear was black pants that were cut like jeans and made out of some stretchy polyester blend. We called them S.I.P.s for Sorority Issue Pants because all of the sorors wore them on the weekends. I wish I had those pants now. They probably wouldn't be in style anymore but I wouldn't care.


There's a LuLu Lemon yoga store near my house. Maybe I'll get some cute yoga pants. That might not be so bad.