Suit Yourself

....Why Bathing Suit Shopping With Kids Sucks...

I’ve never been an avid clothing shopper. I’m an unfortunate mix of awkward shapes, Gumby-like limbs, and no style. However, this year we joined a pool, and I figured I ought to look into a new suit or two. If you are one of those friends who works out regularly, managed to retain normal boob and stomach shape post-pregnancy, and/or has plenty of money to buy whatever damn suits you want, ignore this.  If you are not and happen to be a parent of young children, planning on shopping for a budget-friendly bathing suit any time soon, let me share these insights with you. 

First, sizing is not your friend. Thanks to pregnancy, perhaps nursing, and then stopping nursing, your belly and body in general has gone through more changes than David Bowie’s hair. As of now, your once adorably perky boobs have decided to metamorphous into gravity-stricken, chicken-cutlet-resembling parts for which an a-cup is still a little roomy. This makes nearly all tops look confused, and frankly a little unsure about what they are supposed to do with said-boobs.  When trying on one pieces, this means that while a certain size on the top-half may work, the bottom area of the bathing suit looks like it’s trying to squeeze your ass out of existence, or at least out of the bathing suit. Mix and match may lure you into hoping for success, but you’ll find that most bottoms (of any size) that are not a knee-length skirt are made for 16-year-old models with derrieres that have no need for supporting lift, elastic, or coverage in general.

As you dutifully attempt to find the size that just might line up with your interesting shape, your kids are sitting quietly in the cart, in sight, making no noise and destroying nothing in the store. LOL. Nice try, Mama. Your three-year-old keeps bringing you every teenie-bopper-stringy top that sparkles because it’s shiny, therefore pretty, while your one-year-old takes about 20 hangers off the bottom rack in two seconds flat, trapping herself in a tangled disaster of material, straps, and hanger hooks.

Once you somehow extract the two kids from the clothing rack poles where they are happier than pigs in poo, you attempt to pick a dressing room. This is where things typically go downhill if they haven’t already, and here’s some culprits I’ve identified:

• ·      The Door Gap. While you may first appreciate that it’s impossible for your kid to get locked inside a changing room with no way out, the gap between the door and floor makes it darn near impossible to entrap them in one for 3 minutes while trying on. The floors are often a little dirty and dusty [read: disgusting], so when your kid is literally trying to belly-slide out of it every 30 seconds, that makes changing difficult, no matter the level of warp speed you’re pushing. Your oldest kid will grab the toddlers leg to help you. “I got her, Mom, I got her!” she’ll holler, while afore-mentioned toddler screams as her plan is thwarted. Congratulations; now, anyone with in a 4-mile radius is judging the crap out of you.
• ·      The “sanitary lining” of the bathing suit may never cross your mind as an issue until your child tries to peel all of them off, saying “I found a tag! I’ll get it,” and all you can do is imagine is the dozens of crotches that have been on that bathing suit as you dump the rest of the hand sanitizer on her hands, gagging.
• ·      The hangers. Those $#@*%#@ing hangers. When you have children with you, and you’re trying to either pull a bathing suit off, or be a courteous shopper and clip the various pieces back, it takes about 6 hours to do it right, and meanwhile, your toddler has taken this prime opportunity to escape under the god forsaken Door Gap again, and you haven’t put your pants back on. The fitting room attendant seeing you in your skivvies is the least of your worries at this point, but you mentally apologize for scarring her teenage eyes and whatever sanguine images she had of raising children peacefully one day.

As you know, there’s no way you will find the magical bathing suit in one try, one that covers necessary areas while keeping some dignity of not wearing the same suit as your grandmother. So this process must be repeated multiple times, as quickly as possible like it’s a damn relay race at some sort of twisted Field Day. Except typically it results in none of the choices working as you realize you will just shop online one night and pray to the spiteful god of swimwear that it fits. While chances of finding a suit are still slim to none, at least you aren’t chasing your kid through a store in your underwear.