UP THE DUFF Week 23: My classy and elegant days are over.

Earlier this week, I went to Dumpling King to meet Mr Chick who was already seated and awaiting his lunch. Mid-wave, I promptly tripped up the restaurant step and face-planted so spectacularly I nearly brought a nearby, fully-set table down with me.

The only difference between this and last week’s gumby move – when I rolled over and fell out of bed at a hotel we were staying at – was that it was horrifically public. A fellow diner was so shocked he nearly choked on his Northern Style pork wonton.

My centre of gravity is clearly not what it used to be and worse, Mr Chick witnessed both incidents, forever bursting the bubble of classy elegance that I like to maintain around my husband.

Here’s the thing: when you’re NOT pregnant and you take a tumble, you can sometimes flip yourself up fast, so that no one really notices you actually hit the deck. When you take a pregnant tumble, the only course of action open to you is to crawl onto all fours and laugh heartily (in between moaning with pain – I have a mother of a bruise on my leg thanks to Dumpling King’s uneven flooring) while attempting to hoist yourself and your bump upright.

It’s a slow, excruciating process that you then must decide to either block out forever more, or re-live in your blog in the hope someone else might want to laugh heartily with you (and not at you).

It’s not just the extra bump throwing me off balance; the giant knockers don’t help either. And, as I’ve touched on before, they continue to grow beyond all recognition. Yesterday, I yanked an old sports bra out of my drawer that has never let me down – only to find that instead of covering my boobage it now resembles a weird nipple tasselled-type garment that a pregnant stripper might choose to wear.

Eventually I found a bra that actually fit and got myself to the gym to meet my sister-in-law. She instantly clocked my heaving bosom and joked that she hoped I planned to breastfeed, because ‘if there’s no milk in those puppies, something is very wrong’.

Yep, I think it’s safe to say that classy and elegant has definitely left the building.

Can you be classy, elegant + pregnant? I seriously doubt it unless you are Gwen Stefani or Heidi Klum but I’m open to tips and suggestions (or just horrific pregnancy stories like the Dumpling King Incident). Right now I’m contemplating not leaving the house until it’s time to go to the hospital.