Well, SHIRT!

I have reached the point where my shirts no longer fit. It has been a rough week for me no longer having anything to wear but my husband's shirts. I've been wearing maternity pants for a while because I couldn't button my regular pants, and one of my friends wisely suggested that if I was going to buy any pants, I might as well get as much use out of them as possible. I also very graciously received some pants from one of my friends from PA. My friend Anne sent me her old maternity pants that she didn't see a need for herself anymore. I am beyond thankful! I have been able to get by wearing any bigger shirts I own, or shirts that are long that become a normal-ish fit with my belly, and then I also used long tanks to layer to make sure my belly was covered. Now, I have way too much tank top showing at the bottom to look like normal human being.

And then there was the St. Louis Blues Game Debacle of 2016. I had two shirts that fit relatively well up until last week. One was a KC Royals shirt and the other was a St. Louis Blues shirt. We were going to the Blues game with friends last Friday, and I prayed all week that it would still fit on Friday. It didn't. I may have had a little breakdown and a little bit of pregnancy rage fit throwing. This resulted in The Hubs taking me to get a new Blues shirt before we went to the game, and very briefly I felt better because I went from the women's medium shirt that no longer fit to a men's small shirt that did. I went down a size! Kind of... but not to worry...it barely fits already... and it hasn't even been a week since I got that shirt.

Mommy and Baby's first NHL game in person!
He didn't seem to care for all the noise.

I have very graciously had some maternity shirts given to me from a couple different people, but unfortunately they are all a size large. I generally wear a women's small or sometimes medium shirt. I'm not that tiny in real life, but I have very small boobs, so I don't need any extra space to accommodate like many women do, so though the rest of my body is proportionally a medium to large, my chest is an extra small to small, so I usually end up with a small shirt. Because maternity clothes account for the expanding belly and boobs (PS my boobs still fit into my very small bra just fine at this point), I need a small maternity shirt. I have two maternity tanks that helped in wearing normal shirts up to this point, and I recently bought a single maternity t-shirt. The tanks are a small and a medium. I bought the medium first because I felt HUGE at the time, and I feel like I am showing so much faster than most other women I see around the same stage as me. Again, I know every pregnancy and pregnant body is different, but my stomach just sticks out like crazy. Well, the medium tank is too big, and I get the feeling it will always be just a little too big even as I keep growing...unless my boobs decide to catch up suddenly, which probably won't happen, and that's ok!

After spending several days in The hubs' shorts and shirts lounging around the house without any makeup and barely fixing my hair (I keep it short and have to straighten my otherwise very unruly hair-think Hagrid from Harry Potter),I was feeling pretty gross and unhappy with my current state. Then I realized that I have been spending a lot of time this week just looking at old pictures of myself. Pictures from the last few years leading up to this pregnancy just to check and see what I used to look like. I just wanted to reassure myself that this giant belly that is starting to get in my way hasn't always been there because it's hard to remember what simple tasks were like before. I spent so much time all bloated, and then I suddenly had this giant stomach sticking out, and I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't always there. I can't believe I still have SO FAR to go. Granted, I was asked to fill out the hospital registration for L&D this week at my doctor's appointment, so I'm sure the rest of this pregnancy will begin to really fly by. *Fingers Crossed...sort of.* If it could fly by without my belly expanding any further while the baby continues to grow, then that'd be great, but that most obviously won't happen.

See! Proof!! I used to be able to see my feet
and bend over without having an obstruction.

Oh, and washing the dishes was much easier back then.

But I seriously need to stop looking at these.

Runner's Rambles: Pregnancy and Body Image-- This is real life.

Oh boy. This is one of those things that is rough to share with others. I'm sidelined from running again temporarily due to severe sciatica. Walking, sitting, laying, anything and everything hurts right now, so I've had some time to just think, or overthink rather. Many people, if not all, struggle with body image at least at some point in their lives. I am one of those people. So, let's start from the top.

When I was a teenager, I remember the taunting about being fat. I believed those words because after all, I wore a size 7, and I weighed in at 130 lbs and 5' 5" tall. Um, so that may be hard to picture, but I wasn't fat, I just didn't know that I wasn't fat. I have a small chest, and I'm ok with that, but I was teased about that too. I also have big hips, but I didn't get a whole lot of teasing about that. That is however the feature that I believe people are referring to when they constantly tell me, "but you don't look like a runner." As an adult, I usually weigh in somewhere around 150 lbs, but for the most part, I am generally concerned with the way my body PERFORMS and of course, let's be real, I do still care how I look. I don't put AS MUCH stock in how much I weigh. Usually.

Now I'm pregnant. This is ROUGH. I am fully aware that I am growing a human being, and while I think that part is pretty awesome, it's hard to deal for me personally. I actually lost weight at first because I was sick. Many people know that the first phase is bloating. I have been and still am super bloated. Sooo bloated, and I wasn't a big fan of that stage. It was hard because I felt huge all the time, but I knew that I had lost weight despite the fact that I looked like I had gained weight. It was hard. I am still in that phase where I look chubby instead of pregnant. I'm in that stage where my regular pants don't fit, but I don't need maternity pants because I don't have a "bump." It's a weird place physically and mentally for me. Gaining weight has never been a goal of mine. Losing or maintaining. That's where I'm used to being, and gaining weight is not something I have ever been comfortable with.

The fact that I am bothered by this is bad for two reasons. First, I know that I'm pregnant, and I should just accept the fact that my body is changing because even if other people don't know that I am pregnant, it doesn't change the fact that I am. Also, I know that I am going to get bigger. Much, MUCH bigger. I haven't even started really showing yet, and I am going to get bigger, and I will have to deal with that. There is also a chance that my body will change in ways that I can't even imagine yet. What I am freaking out about, and I know I can't do anything about it, is the way my stomach will stretch. Not just stretch marks that I know so many mothers are proud of, but also the fact that I have surgical scars on my stomach already. I'm not sure what will happen to those scars as my stomach stretches out. I am pretty freaked out about the whole scar thing. I mean, I'm just being real here.

I've already been told by some people that just because I didn't cherish every second of first trimester puking my guts out, that I obviously don't love my child, and that I probably don't deserve to be a mother compared to many other women out there. No joke, Go read a pregnancy forum somewhere on the internet. You will see some crazy stuff. I mean, the thing about social media is that people put up perfect snapshots of their lives, and basically all you see on social media is that pregnancy is amazing and wonderful and every second is beautiful, and that women should love every aspect of their changing body in order to be a good person, a good mother, and a good woman. Well, I guess I'm not any of those things because this has been a rough journey so far that is far from over. And my body will be changed forever, so it truly is far from over. Mostly I worry that I will never get back to running long distances like I'd like to. I know that not just my body will be changing, but so will my whole life. I know that it is possible, and I want to be that person. I am so afraid that I won't be that person though. I'm not sure why, but I feel scared that I won't find a way to make the time. I am a much better person when I run, so I hope that I have the resolve to meet the long terms goals I have for myself of  making my mental and physical health a priority while also being there for my child, but only time will tell if I can balance it all.