On Spanxing

There are several truths looming over me right now:

1) My baby weight is not BUDGING.  At all.  Despite PB nursing like a fiend and packing the weight on, the numbers on the scale fluctuate maybe 1/2 a pound at most no matter what I do.  Annoying to say the least.

2) There is a very important wedding coming up in about 6 weeks.

3) I have to don something other than maternity clothes.

*gulp*

I ordered a dress that looked lovely online - the right color, appropriate cut, good price, etc.  It showed up, and I tried it on as soon as it arrived.... *double gulp* I looked awful - like some oddly misshapen caricature of my former self.  I hollered that I was not going to be stepping out of my closet in the dress and everyone scoffed at me until my husband came in and winced and said, "Yeah... maybe we should find you a different style."

Ladies, from a man that has to vie for attention with 4 kids, a house full of mold, a sink full of dishes, a laundry room full of pure hell, and a computer full of Facebook?  That's bad.  (I can't tell you how much I appreciate his honesty here - I think it'd be worse if he told me how sexy I looked.  Then I'd have to punch him and I don't know if I'd have been able to handle guilt on top of self-disgust.)

Cue my mother-in-law: "Have you tried Spanx?"

Whomp.

(That was the sound of my self-esteem hitting rock-bottom.)


"Um, no... Spanx are for faaaaaaa............"  (Pause mid-sentence as I realize that she's holding up a pair of her own... and when it dawns on me that I'm actually there.)  "Um, no I haven't.  It hasn't been something I've thought about before." (Tactful enough?)

"You should try my Spanx.  Seriously.  Try them.  If they work, you can keep the dress - if not, we'll go shopping."

Sigh.  I had heretofore done nothing but scoff at the Spanx-wearing population and assumed that all ills can be cured with proper diet and exercise.  (Yes, my foot does taste delicious, thanks.  So glad I'm eating it now.)  Dejectedly, I took from her this thing that looked like I'd have struggle to get onto my twins' baby dolls, let alone on my foot (and for-freaking-get actually smushing my ass into it).  Seriously, this thing could have fit into a powder compact.  Easily.  So I start stretching it out to fit it over my foot and come to my first observation: In addition to working my thighs, butt, and abs, I need to work my arms.  Then I get it halfway up my thighs and look down and realize I've effectively rubber banded my legs together and am turning purple from mid-thigh downward.  "Ma!  Seriously?  This thing is gonna make me lose weight by forcing the doctors to amputate my legs to remove it!"  "Shut up and put your big girl panties on, Melis!"  "I am putting my big-girl panties on, MIL!  That's the problem!"  (She hurls a dish rag at me...) "Quit bitching and hike 'em up."  "[insert explitives here]"

Nearly an hour later (no more than ten minutes, but it felt like an hour and I was sweating like a sinner in church by the time it was done) I had managed to squeeze a pregnancy's worth of me into an elastic tube (and had a new-found sympathy for the ground pork that gets stuffed into casings to make sausages) that began just beneath my bra and ended just north of my knees. 

Grudgingly, I had to admit... the thing worked.  I don't know where it put the lumps and  bumps, but somehow the Spanx had smoothed my... er... issues.  I mean, we're far from perfect, but I can for sure wear the dress I purchased with some decorum of pride and class - okay, well, at least without feeling like a side-show. 

Really?  Spanx?  I'm wearing Spanx?

But... my butt... it did look much better.

And my hips were only the bottom of the hour-glass, not the bottom of one hour glass AND the top of another one.

Sweeeeeeeeeet.

And then, I had to pee.  Damnit.  Well, I figure I'll have to modify my own (soon-to-be-purchased [in two colors]) Spanx to include a pee-hatch.  I'm thinking something with snaps.  I dunno.  But either I am going to have to figure something out or I'm not going to drink anything before this wedding and risk dying of dehydration because the thought of wrestling those things down and then back up in a restroom stall with a baby strapped to my chest and twins clumped around my knees gives me nightmares.

Whatever - the things we do to not look like we've given birth to 4 kids in 4 years, right?  I'm totally fine with spending a mortgage payment on medieval torture devices that squish my fat from one part of my anatomy to another.  Just so long as I can wear my damned dress.

Spanx.  I'm there.

Sigh.