It figures

So finally this week I have officially accepted the fact that the pregnancy has left its calling card and isn't going away on its own, and it is up to me to sever the acquaintance. Up through week twelve I blithely accepted the fact that we were 'working on it,' and optimistically chose to see progress in the fact that I was back in most of my pre-pregnancy clothes, a terribly irrelevant point since most of my pre-pregnancy clothes were a little loose around the waist anyway.

At week twelve I got Serious. 'You see,' I explained to Michael, demonstrating in front of the mirror, 'it's not that there's any extra material there, actually. I can suck it in (like this) and look perfectly normal. But if I let it go (like this), then, well, it bulges a tiny bit. And I can't remember to walk around sucking it in all the time.' What irritated me the most, I think, was the way that if I so much as drank a full 8 oz. glass of water, it sprawled. It's as if my abdominal muscles, tired of carrying Baby for all those months, don't realise that the job's already been taken over elsewhere, and are going on strike, refusing to do even their old job in a satisfactory manner. So the next couple of weeks were spent in severe chidings to the recalcitrant muscles and threats of grueling exercises to be imposed if they did not step up to the plate.

They did not. Apparently we had reached a stalemate, despite my loud conversations to Michael about how, if this was how it was going to be, we might as well just START OUT with pouches, like kangaroos, and leave off the pleasant fiction that we're supposed to have hourglass waists at all. 'If I'd known how it would turn out,' I intoned to my very patient and loving husband, who has insisted repeatedly that he likes me just the way I am and that I am making a mountain out of a molehill (whereas my problem is that the molehill is there in the first place), 'I would have started wearing a post-partum support belt right away! But NO, I thought I'd give my body a chance to recover on its OWN! And HAS it? No, indeed! Ha! I'll show those muscles! If they know what's good for them, they'll get back to doing their job posthaste!' All fell on deaf muscles.

Not to obsess about appearances, of course. If this is really and truly the inevitable effect of bearing a child courtesy of the Curse, then I'll accept it for what it is, learn to embrace my new shape, and move on with my life. But until I have proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt, then I refuse to resign myself to complacency.

So this week I set out to disprove that point. I have gasped and floundered through 25 sit-ups every night, and found, to my great delight and everlasting joy, that my blue jeans fit once again! This is perhaps the most accurate measure of all, since the scales can say all they want to on the topic and I will happily ignore them. Never mind that they were low-rise jeans and we are still spilling out a little over the top of them when we drink a full cup of water. We are IN them again!! And they zip up PROPERLY!

There. That's a very shallow post of surprisingly tremendous import.