It’s raining outside and you hold me tight. Upright, even, against the storm.

Yours is the snug embrace that meets me where I’m at. On any given day, you have no expectations of me other than to grow. To continue growing, as a person, growing a person.

You are my maternity pants.

Accepting when my size seems to double in a given hour after a particularly lush heaping of noodles. After a particularly crispy bacon and egg sandwich. After a healthy serving of pickles on the side. And that was just breakfast- but you don’t judge, not once. Not when my Joe Fresh underwear are more inside my bum than around it, and not when my shirts no longer reach my waistline.

Who needs a waistline when your torso turtleneck’s love is unconditional?

Your touch is the most forgiving, no seams, no bounds. So freeing, so at peace with my second degree abdominal separation and my drooping deflated buttocks. You hold me together, when my best intentions cannot.

You and I know I’m not caressing the growing baby, let’s set the record straight. Clearly, we know I’m petting the pant.

I believe with my soul you are never embracing me just to have me return a favour. I vow to wash you, slowly and gently, at least once every fourteen days, for as long as we both shall live.

You, my maternity pant, are my lifeline.You are the only thing that fits me, and pants, you fit me good.

Thanks for always being right in the laundry pile where I deposited you last- on top. Thanks for giving me permission to expand upon every hope for a figure I ever had.

We can do better, together.

I used to think I was better than you, but back then, that fit and firm version of me didn’t deserve you anyhow, not with all that ostentation.

Today I am humbled by you, sweet, delicious, seamless, stretchy pant. Your long and strong torso turtleneck really turns my crank.

Here’s to twenty more years waistband free, you and I. I will never go back to another.