Imagine these deep colored, squiggly lines all of your belly. Now pity me.
Stretch marks suck.
So do women who don’t get them.
Remember that post I did a while ago on the things I couldn’t live without during my pregnancy? I said one of the things was Palmer’s Tummy Butter because it had kept me from getting stretch marks. I would now like to amend that statement, please.
Palmer’s Tummy Butter does the best it can until month 8. At month 8 all bets are off and your stomach will have to fend for itself. At least, it will if you are MY tummy. And how has my tummy chosen to fend for itself? By rolling over and playing dead. The stretch marks have walked across it and paraded their hideous stamp of ownership and my stomach wants nothing to do to fight them off.
At first, I thought they were kind of cute. They were around my belly button and I would laugh and tell Chris, “Look! Its like my stomach is cracking!” Now, they have surrounded my entire belly and are slowly working their way south. They no longer look like cracks, but more like shattered glass. Its not like my stomach is cracking. Its like my stomach was smashed into a thousand little pieces.
At my last doctor’s appointment, I asked my doctor what I could do about the stretch marks.
“Use your tummy butter!” she sang.
“I. Am. Using. My. Tummy. Butter.” I responded through clenched teeth. “Will these go away after the birth?”
(Pause)
(Even longer pause)
(Even longer, more uncomfortable pause)
“They will fade significantly,” she finally replied.
Fade significantly? What the crap does that mean? Cause it sounds to me like she just basically told me to get used to it, kid.
Well, this is just perfect. Now I’ll have a road map of all the back roads in lower Alabama on my stomach FOREVER along with a beautiful scar from my C-section. Bikini season, here I come!
Dear Bean,
As your mother, I love you unconditionally already. You are the joy of my life and I haven’t even met you yet. But as a woman, I just want you to know that I will hold this against you for the rest of your life.
Love,
Mom
I’ve been reading through the last few months of postings and I have to confess something (not that it will be any big surprise…). Â I haven’t really been very good to Chris. Â I’ve been emotional, hormonal, critical, and just no fun for him to be around. Â But as out of line as I may have been, Chris has remained as constant and steady a force in our marriage as he ever has.
I think that’s what I might love the most about Chris. Â He’s as steady and consistent as the day is long. Â He’s the same person I knew when we were 16-years-old and he’ll be the same person I know when we’re rocking in porch swings with grandkids running in our yard. Â He’s grounded and solid. Â And when you’re married to someone as dramatic as I am, that’s really a tough thing to maintain.
Tonight, I decided to interview Chris on camera. Â I wanted to hear what his thoughts were about this new little adventure we are about to go on, but I also wanted people to be able to experience the calm that is Chris. Â You can read his blog posts, you can look at his pictures, you can listen to my stories about him, but until you spend a few minutes sitting on a couch with him talking, you really just don’t have the full calming experience that Chris brings. Â As things get ready to be pretty crazy around our house, I only have to spend a few minutes on a couch with Chris to get my bearings again.
On our wedding day, I gave Chris an English compass in a wooden box with a plaque on the outside that said, “To my husband, so that you can always find your way home to me.” Â But in all honesty, Chris doesn’t need a compass. Â He’s the one that I turn to to find my way back when things are just a little too out of control.
And he’s pretty cute, too.
It all started with this…
A pile of beautiful quilts and blankets handmade with love by friends and family for the Bean. I had somehow managed to find a place in the nursery for everything except these beautiful things. It just didn’t seem right to pack them up in a box or cram them in some dark corner of a closet. I needed somewhere to store them where I could easily get to them.
I mentioned my dilemma to Chris this past weekend. My solution was to go to Target (all part of my plan…MMmmwuahahaha…) and pick up a simple closet organizer – a sweater hanger. You know the kind. The cheap canvas ones that hang from the clothes bar in your closet and provide storage for your sweaters? Yeah. One of those. Â I thought I could just fill it with my blankets and quilts instead of sweaters.
I might as well have told Chris I was going to stand in the front yard in a cropped t-shirt, bare feet, and chew on tobacco while picking my toes.
“You can’t do that!” he insisted. “That’s so trashy! If you want a better closet, we should get a closet organizing system.”
The phrase “organizing system” sent my nesting impulse into overdrive. He was right. How could I have been so short sighted? We needed an ORGANIZING SYSTEM. What kind of mother was I that I didn’t see this? Man, I’m glad Chris is in my life. I almost made a horrible mistake.
So, Sunday morning after church, I dragged Chris up to Home Depot to pick out our ORGANIZING SYSTEM.
Oh. Holy. Goodness. Did you know there is an entire aisle in Home Depot for ORGANIZING? Its like a nester’s paradise. I was surprised that I didn’t find scores of pregnant women standing in awe next to me, staring at the hundreds of choices of shelving, boxing, and storing. But, alas, it was just me drooling in the organizing aisle that morning.
Armed with our new ORGANIZING SYSTEM, we headed home so that I could oversee the installation of the perfect closet for the nursery.
This is his happy face.
Before you can restructure a closet, you have to empty it first. Which means that this one little project to find a place to store my beautiful blankets was now seeping out into the rest of the house.
Baby things seeping out into the guest bedroom
Then, Chris started cutting and customizing my dream closet. Â It wasn’t easy. Â He wasn’t happy. Â And I tried to stay out of the way.
Emptying the closet
Chris cutting the shelving with a large power tool while I kept shrieking, "DON'T CUT YOUR FINGERS!"
Mostly, I stayed out of the way because of my enormous feet. Â One wrong step and I could crush an entire ORGANIZING SYSTEM like King Kong in New York. Â These feet are lethal weapons, I tell you. Â Better if they just cheer from the sidelines.
King Kong Feet
Thankfully, Chris is pretty capable and doesn’t really listen to me much anyway. Â He was able to finish it all by himself. Â And it was perfect. Â More room. Â More storage. Â And more important than all of that – a perfect place for my blankets.
And now the baby can be born.
It might have cost more. Â It might have taken more time. Â But it sure does beat a sweater hanger.
18May
38 Weeks
Chris: Â I can see your belly.
(Silence.)
Chris: Â I think you’re pretty.
