Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

posted by Maureen

Dan and I moved into our new apartment in mid-January, which was just about the time that I started to notice my belly bump, ever so slightly.

Late January shot. (Note that I am definitely sucking my belly in here!)

Our new place is great. It’s much nicer and bigger than where we lived before, and it has lots of nice touches like granite countertops, a fireplace, and framed bathroom mirrors.

The only problem has been this:

And this:

Can you tell what’s wrong with these pictures?

Short, little me can see this:

But not all this:

23 weeks...taken a month ago. 

For quite some time, these two bathroom mirrors were the only ones in our apartment, which meant that I had very little concept of just what I looked like as my body was growing and changing.  This made for some funny moments in various places like the gym locker room or reflective storefront windows, where I’d stop in my tracks and stare a little longer than normal at the unfamiliar figure looking back at me. Since I couldn’t see much below my shoulders in the mirror at home on a regular basis at home the difference seemed pretty stark when I actually did get to see my full reflection.

So, we were in need of a full-length mirror, which you might think we’d get around to buying sooner, rather than later. Not so, my friends. Not so. It took us procrastinators three months to finally get something permanent on our wall! 

In truth, it actually just took us a surprisingly long time to find one that we liked, wasn’t too much money, and fit in the space we need to put it. Our lucky day finally came a few weeks ago at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. One 15% off coupon and 20 minutes of Dan’s time later, we finally had this:

The mirror itself isn’t anything super special, but it sure is nice to finally be able to make sure my outfits match and to check on the belly growing progress on a more regular basis. Truth be told, it fascinates me to watch myself getting bigger. I actually quite like it, though much more in the belly department than the hip/thigh expansion that’s also taking place. We’ll see if I continue to be as “happy” about gaining weight when the pounds really start packing on in the 3^rd trimester!