Week 30, Day 1: What a Day!

Yay, Little Guy is 30 weeks along already! Before I recount my embarrassing day, let me say that I am so happy Little Guy is doing well, and all of the aches and pains and embarrassing stuff are well worth it.

It all started over the weekend when I went to the salon for the first time in over 3 months. I love the stylist I go to, but her salon is downtown and it's a pain to get to. But I braved the traffic on Saturday and was well rewarded with a great cut and a nice head and neck massage. This inspired me to take my personal hygiene routine up a notch and shave my entire legs. This has been a rare occurence during my pregnancy - at first I was too nauseous to care, and now I can't even see the upper parts of my legs (out of sight, out of mind).

Apparently shaving your legs blind is not a good idea. I now have a bad case of razor burn/heat rash/chafing that is made worse by my expanding legs and maternity pants that don't fit quite right. It got so bad yesterday that I bought some large band-aids to try to cover the area, but since I can't actually see the area, I ended up putting the adhesive over part of the rash, which of course made matters worse.

The situation wasn't any better this morning, so I stopped at the drugstore on my way to work and bought some gauze to wrap my thighs. I felt ridiculous trying to balance myself in the bathroom stall, wrapping myself up like a mummy. But it seemed to cover the area without sticking to it, so all was right with the world. That is, until I started to pull my pants up and caught sight of the tile floor THROUGH the seat of my pants. How was this possible? That's right, I discovered I had a 2-inch rip down the seam of my favorite maternity pants. Luckily as long as I stood perfectly straight, my shirt covered it. (At least as far as I could tell in the mirror. No one mentioned it, so that's good enough for me.)

The gauze worked for about an hour until my expanding thighs caused it to roll up in the middle, which made the chafing worse. So I rationed my trips to the bathroom and tried not to move from my desk until lunchtime. I decided that finding some biker shorts to wear under my pants was my only hope, and headed to Ross over lunch. I tried on a pair that I couldn't even get over my knees (maybe I was mistakenly in the little girl's department??), then gave up and got back into my rolled-up gauze and ripped pants. If you've never been pregnant, just imagine what it would be like to get dressed and undressed with a 25-pound watermelon strapped to your stomach. I was winded by the time I was ready to leave the fitting room, when I noticed that the bottom half of my pants were now COVERED in dust, dirt, and hair. If you've never been to a Ross, keep in mind that dirt-cheap clothes involve dirt-filled fitting rooms. At that point I faced the difficult decision of whether to take the pants off and try to brush them off, or find a way to bend down and brush them off without the dreaded undressing/redressing. I opted to contort myself by lifting my leg onto the fitting room bench and bent over backwards to brush the dirt off with my fingertips, a lengthy and grueling process.

My legs were really on fire as I walked back to work, and as I glanced around desperately for another option, the Macy's sign caught my eye. I hobbled in, found the most hideous pair of biker shorts, and went through the whole undressing/redressing routine again. The shorts actually fit (under my belly, of course) and seemed like they would protect my legs, so I forced myself to pay $30 for them (on sale!). Anyone who knows how frugal (or to be honest, cheap) I am knows how horrified I was to pay that much for something so ugly. All that money for a Nike symbol that was hidden under my belly anyway.

But the story has a happy ending - the hideous biker shorts did the trick. Hopefully I'll only be an 80's reject for the next couple of days until my rash heals. Then on to the next painful/embarrassing pregnancy symptom!

By the way, I will NOT be posting a picture of myself in the biker shorts. I showed them to Adam when I got home from work and he almost fell out of his chair.