The jeans

In the morning I'm thin again. The rest of the day it's easy to see that I'm slowly, slowly getting back to normal, but I puff up a bit after lunch and by bedtime my belly is bloated and hard for me to look at. Even so I'm shrinking, little by little.

After an extended absence (the doctor told me not to work out so the bronchitis would leave my system and it took weeks for me to stop hacking) I returned to the gym. When I was done talking baby with the new dad who used to manage the gym and now just fills in when they're short on staff, I decided I'd only stay for a short workout; I arc-trained for ten minutes, lifted weights for twenty, then crunched and stretched for another ten. In the locker room I took off my sneakers and slowly stepped on the scale. I moved the big marker to the 100, and the smaller one to 30. Too heavy. I moved it to 29, then down another half notch to 28.5 where the balance was, well, balanced. Convinced the scale was wrong I got off, zeroed it, then stepped back on. 128.5 again.

My mother's scale at the shore pegged me at a solid 130, but it's cheap and unbalanced so I didn't stress. Back at the gym after yoga on Wednesday, this time wearing pants, not shorts, I weighed myself again. This time it was 128 and I was confident that my weight had finally dipped back below 130.

I don't know if it's the number that's convinced me I look smaller, or if it's the fact that two pairs of pre-pregnancy pants have made their way back into my wardrobe, but I'm feeling better about how I look. Now when people say things about having another baby I'm less horrified, and I know it's selfish, but there's no way I'd have another without getting my body back after the first because if you don't lose it the first time it's even harder the second time around and I don't think I could handle the insecurity of knowing the weight might never come off.

I'm getting ahead of myself though. I still have 16 pounds to lose to get back to my official starting point and 16 pounds is a lot of weight. In my dresser I have a drawer that's filled with pants that no longer fit. A pair of size 2 Abercrombie capris I bought at Marshalls last spring fit, but squeeze the gut unflatteringly. A pair of small pink pants I bought from Target last summer when my clothes still fit, but fit too tightly for comfort now slide on and off easily. A pair of size 2 Ann Taylor jeans I stopped wearing a few years ago because they were so high-waisted it hurt to sit down in them fit just a little tightly in the butt. I haven't even tried a pair of size 1 low-rise khaki capris from Old Navy, because I know that 128 pounds won't fit into a size 1. But my jeans? The ones Pigs requested to see? The Sevens that cost way, way, way too much money? I can put them on again and zipper them and even button the top. Of course there's a muffin top issue, so I won't be wearing them for at least another ten pounds, but they fit over my ass for the first time in close to a year. Just pulling them all the way up my legs, which I couldn't do at all in July, tasted like victory.

The picture I've posted is somewhat intentionally fuzzy. You can tell I'm wearing them, but you can't really get an idea of just how fabulous the jeans are and you can't see how unfabulous I look in them. Here's a photo of my "goal worthy" size 26 Seven For All Mankind A Pocket skinny jeans lounging sexily without me on my sofa.



They currently look much better without me in them, but it's still hard to get a sense of just how perfect they are. I don't know that these are the exact jeans, but here's a similar pair worn by a model who hasn't recently had a baby.