How to look good pregnant

The plus side is that Valentine’s day chocolate will be guilt free this year. Being eight months pregnant is pretty much a license to munch through an entire heart shape, velvet lined, ribbon tied box of yummyness.  Cuddles and snuggles, however, are a little more challenging. My soon to be ‘udders’ are encased in a £5 maternity bra found in the bargain bucket of House of Fraser which was, needless to say, not selected for it’s amorous potential. Bumps and baby bras are passion killers. Babies, I’m told, are the best form of contraception. Toddlers and tantrums leave little room for grown up ‘two time’. So when, exactly, will the frothy frillies be resurrected?

We are told that it is important to factor in time for ‘us’ asap post birth in order to remain connected and communicating as a couple, or risk becoming a milk machine and a poo collector who quickly feel like strangers to one another.  One thing I know for sure is that when the time comes for ‘the first dinner date’ I will not be taking my wobbly Mummy tummy to Reiss for a new please-let-him-still-find-me-attractive outfit. I went there in my slimmest pre pregnancy days on the prowl for a knock-him-dead dress and tried on a structured, corseted number that felt fabulous. Having gone shopping solo I peered around the curtain and asked the waspish sales assistant to help zip me up. She looked disapprovingly at my reflection and fluffed her hands around her hips and said ‘No. There is too much.’ ‘Too much dress?’ I replied, optimistically, thinking perhaps she’d shimmy off and get me a smaller size. ‘No’. She answered without hesitation. ‘There is too much you.’ Well. That should have been enough for me to march out of the shop and head to the nearest oversize outfitters to be cheered up but for some bizarre reason I spent the next 40 minutes trying on outfit after miserable outfit trying to gain her approval. The majority of that retail trip remains unworn in my wardrobe and will certainly not flatter my twin-trauma-torso, which will inevitably have caused ‘even more me’.  Maybe our ‘first date’ should be somewhere very dark… that requires big baggy saggy overalls. Lazer quest anyone?