I Don't Need Maternity Clothes...

Let me start by sharing a little fact about me: I hate shopping. Despise. Boiling abhorrence. Would rather stick pencils in my eyeballs and light them on fire than have to go shopping.

Like most women, I may have some body image issues. For example, when I'm fatter than I would like to be, I feel bad about how my body looks. Weird, right? My husband once found me in the women's section of Macy's bawling because everything I tried on was tight and made me look like a prize heifer.

This leads me to wear my clothes into the ground before I can bear facing the stores again.

Now I'm not just telling you this because it's confessional time and it's too expensive to see a therapist. Today I was at the breaking point and forced myself to go to the mall before all my clothes disintegrated off my body. Have I mentioned I'm pregnant? Oh yes, this was a trip I was really looking forward to.

I entered Macy's and gave myself a pep talk, "Take it slow and focus on tops first. You already know you need a large because your boobs exploded everywhere. We can worry about pants and dresses afterwards."

Oh, another awesome trait about me when shopping: I have completely unrealistic expectations regarding what works well on my body, which colors should be paired together and how different cuts make me look stunning and others like a bloated hippopotamus--and my inexplicable need to buy the latter.

I started off with a shirt and sweater combo that I thought went really well together, but I'm not to be trusted, so I found a saleslady to see if I was crazy. Turns out I actually paired things together that were meant to be together. Score one.

But then I spied a pair of jeans. I desperately needed new jeans. But jeans shopping could completely torpedo an entire day of shopping. "These look miserable; I'm never shopping again; bring on the fried chicken." So what did I do?

I picked up the jeans. In a size larger than what I normally wear since, after all, I'm pregnant and things are shifting around.

Guys, guess what???

I did it! I assembled an entire outfit that looked pretty good and I didn't want to smash the fitting room mirrors and burn the place down.

So then I got confident.

Oops.

I've mentioned my boobs before...you know, the enormous, gargantuan beasts that have taken over my entire body.

When it came time to try on dresses, we hit a slight snag. And by slight I mean enormous. There I was in a size [omitted by author: let's just say it was SIX sizes bigger than what I normally wear] and unable to make the dress fit over my boobs while I was swimming in the rest of the dress.

The hyperventilating was starting.

Five dresses later and nary a style, fabric or color was helping matters.

This was clearly not working well for me. And last I checked, there was not a porn star store in the mall where they cater to women of unique proportions.

But then it hit me. There was one store that might be able to help. But I swore I was not going to go there until my pants were popping open and all my tops became half shirts due to the unstoppable growth of my belly. Dare I do it?

Well, I did need to get a bella band anyway, so I could go pick that up and check to see if they had dresses that might work with size 800ZZZ boobs.

3 dresses later and I'm pleased as punch.

Screw it all. *I* don't technically need maternity clothes yet, but my boobs sure as hell do.