Keep Your Pants Up, Maternity Edition

I've been having trouble this whole pregnancy with keeping my pants up.  Doesn't matter if they are low-rider maternity, larger normal pants, pants with elastic, pants with buttons or even the over belly pants, I've been in near constant need of suspenders.  My solution had been to walk while holding onto them.  Which both looks awesome and doesn't really work that well.

Then I was in Pea in the Pod because I needed to grab some additional clothes as I needed to be a little nicer than business casual for four days at a conference.  I ended up deciding that I would get cut enough slack that I didn't need suits, but I did need some additional non-worn out business clothing.  And while I was there I remembered the secret!

Here's the secret.  You know Spanx?  Holds your fat in and reshapes your lines normally?  Well, there's a product called Mama Spanx and that is not really what it does.  What it does is give your pants something to adhere to!  When I saw it on the rack I immediately remembered that this is the magic trick!

So I grabbed some.  And it was brilliant.  Pants stayed where pants should be!

However, I was struck one day by the amount of layers that were over my belly and so I took a series of shots to document the semi-absurdity of it.

Image 1: this is fully covered.

Image 2: this is with the top sheer shirt pulled up

Image 3: this is with the pants that had stretched over the belly pulled all the way down

Image 4: this is with the fitted tank that I wore under the sheer shirt pulled up. (Note to self: I should probably stop wearing my nice theory suit tanks before the growing belly ruins them for future wear)

Image 5: this is the Mama Spanx pulled down as well.  Yes, four full layers with two going each direction over the belly is what we just saw there.

So, it might seem a bit absurd, but it's brilliant and makes you able to walk, talk, laugh, dance, jiggle, and climb an aircraft carrier all without having to hike your pants!

And yes, I literally mean hiking and climbing all over a low-rider.  Did all the tours of the USS Lexington in this, including the 4-inch heels and the pants stayed up!

I tested it the last day with a pair of low-riders (I'd broken down and just accepted the over the belly all the previous days) and it worked!

Apparently having the hotel full-length mirror inspires me to examine how my clothes stay up!  These are all at just before, exactly and just after 21 weeks.

And for fun, here's one of my feet after I forgot about the hiking part of dinner on an aircraft cruiser when I got dressed:

And for more random biological shots:

As I have a very deep belly button normally, this is a bit freaky.  And on occasion, you can catch a dancing baby here.  Not sure if you can tell if you don't know when to watch, but this is definitely the earliest I've seen motion from the outside.

And last, just to round out with cuteness and awesomeness, here is Trajan this morning at the dentist.  Trajan loves him and so do I.  Except he said we should talk to our pedi about having him seen by the ENT again and possibly pulling out his tonsils as part of a strategy to help his overbite which does not excite me.