Maternity Panties (YOU try coming up with a clever title for this one, buddy)

I discovered that there were, in fact, undies designed for pregnant chicks during Jeffrey's pregnancy. For the first few months of it, I had been wearing my usual cotton bikinis and experienced no problems. But when I started feeling Jeffrey move around, the tightness of my unpregnant panties made me wonder if I was actually squooshing my kid. So I went to the nearest maternity store and discovered maternity bikinis. Just like regular bikinis, only they rode lower and were much bigger around than my old ones. Rock on. All was right in my pregnant world.

Then. My stomach took on Panzer-like proportions. It stretched from hip to hip in one humongous wad of baby and fat and was capable of clearing a room and/or frightening small children. My stomach was like another person magically welded onto me, one that rubbed against my thighs and got chafed by my billowing maternity shirts and generally caused me a lot of grief. The maternity bikinis stopped cutting it.

Reasoning that I was almost through with my pregnancy (okay, I still had a few months, but whatever), I decided against going back to the expensive maternity store and instead betook myself to Hell-Mart where I found awholenother species of maternity panties. I'm not sure what these panties are called, actually. I refer to them as the grannies, but most grannies I know would not be able to nor want wear these panties, for a variety of reasons.

To whit:

They are "one size fits all." All elephants, perhaps. In the world. At the same time. And maybe throw in a hippo or two. The panties stretch from the pubic area all the way up to the boobs. And when worn by a woman at the beginning of her pregnancy, they can actually be stretched to cover her head in the event of a fire or chemical spill. When thrown carelessly on the floor by a pregnant woman who just wants to get in the damn bed, dirty clothes basket be damned, they resemble an extra-large tee-shirt the next morning. Or a car cover. Or, you know, a discarded parachute.

They are designed to fit no real woman in the world. The leg holes, for one thing, are bizarre. When worn by a woman with a smallish belly, the leg holes ride up in such a way that makes you think that they want to be high rise briefs. Except that no pregnant woman wants the bottom of her belly to show, especially if it's her second pregnancy and her fetus has yet to fill out the pooch from her first baby. Once the belly gets bigger, the leg holes somehow manage to shrink and constrict the legs in such a way that the pregnant woman is forced to hack away the elastic so that her legs don't fall off from lack of circulation. Or they get bigger and show off even more sagging/stretch-marked belly. Or, Filing Cabinet forbid, boobs. (No, I'm not kidding.)

Then there's the crotch. The crotch WARNING TO ALL MEN IN MY LIFE WHO MIGHT BE READING THIS: I'M ABOUT TO TALK ABOUT "DOWN THERE." IN PRETTY GRAPHIC TERMS of these panties is not an actual crotch. It's just a seam where the ginormous panels of cloth used to make the panties are joined. Now, pregnancy (I'm trying to be delicate here) is a time of much moisture in a woman's life and if there was ever a time when a woman needs a little extra fabric in the crotchicular area, pregnancy is it. The designers of the panties seemed to realize this, but couldn't quite figure out the engineering process that would ensure it could happen. Because the crotch isn't double layered like regular panties. It is, however, roughly fifteen feet across. (Honestly, I can't even begin to imagine the physiological attributes of the woman who can wear these panties.) There is not a panty liner or thin pad in the world which could fit into the crotch of maternity panties and do anything worthwhile. To remedy this, a woman must line the crotch with three liners and hope for the best.

Which would be that the sticky parts of the liners don't rip out any pubic hairs that accidentally get trapped between the liners. Or that the panties are so laden down with feminine hygiene products that they don't shift and give the impression that pregnancy actually causes a woman to grow a penis because what else explains how urine or other moisture gets leaked onto the front of the panties? Or that the whole giant mass of liners doesn't somehow get disconnected from the crotch of the panties and travel around the vast expanse of material, unbeknownst to the owner, who gets up from her nap thinking that despite her best effort, she's gotten hemorrhoids after all. These panties are NIGHTMARISH, y'all.

It was a time of great joy when I discovered that with this pregnancy, I don't have to wear the grannies. My pregnancy bikinis fit just fine. However, I only have four pairs of them, which means that unless I wash clothes every three days or so, I have to rely on the grannies. Oh, the horror of tugging them on and adjusting and lining and praying for a good panty day.

Two weeks, people. Two more weeks of the grannies. I swear I'm donating them to the circus when this kid is born.