Big Happy Family - by Big Beautiful Dreamer (~BHM, ~BBW, Romance)

[Big Beautiful Dreamer]

~BHM, ~BBW, Romance - Elliott grows a "daddy tummy" during his wife's pregnancy. And likes it.

Big Happy Family

by Big Beautiful Dreamer
​

I tugged my gym shorts up and frowned. Despite the elastic waist, they felt definitely snug. Last Saturday, I’d dismissed the feeling and headed out for touch football in the park, as usual; but there was no mistaking the unwelcome sensation this morning. I lifted my gray T-shirt and looked down. My once-firm belly had softened a little with marriage – I seldom made the Tuesday and Thursday evening matches anymore – but now I spied a little roll around the waistline. Was that what they called love handles? I snorted in mild annoyance, then sat down to don socks and sneakers.

“You coming?” I stood at the doorway to the master bedroom.

“Not today.” Wendy yawned hugely. “Still sleepy.”

I sat down on the edge of the bed and laid a hand on my wife’s burgeoning belly. The slight flutter kick I felt prompted a grin I couldn’t help. Wendy must have felt it too.

“Baby’s awake,” she murmured, her large brown eyes drowsy, lids at half staff, “but Mommy’s not.”

“Mommy needs some more sleep,” I said. I kissed her. “Back later.”

“Don’t get killed,” Wendy mumbled.

Maybe I was imagining things, but today’s game seemed to involve more running than usual. I’d always been the pass king of the pickup game that had been going on for six years now, with periodic changes in the lineup as guys moved in or on. But Avery had been calling the plays for the last few months, and Avery preferred a ground game. Within an hour, I found myself so winded that I took myself out. By tradition, the newbie was the reserve guy. I flopped onto the splintered bench and clapped a hand on Will’s shoulder.

“You’re … in,” I puffed. Will grinned and jogged onto the patch. I watched, shading my eyes against the sun and gulping water from my battered jug. Sitting down had prompted that annoying new roll around my waistband to, well, roll. I closed my eyes in contemplation. Maybe I should try to get back to the Tuesday-Thursday matches. On the other hand, with a baby on the way it was hardly time to be spending less time at home. I shrugged. I had more important things on my mind. When I’d married Wendy, my world had gone from being me-centered to being we-centered. The center was going to shift again before long. There were more important things in life than a little softness in the belly.

Like, for instance, my wife’s increasing radiance. I had no idea whether anyone else would have described Wendy as attractive. I’d fallen for her so completely that by the time I noticed her appearance I was sidetracked by the stardust in my eyes. She was a short stack, barely over five feet, and with honey-brown bobbed hair, cornflower-blue eyes, and what I would have described as a basic figure. Like mine – basic. All the expected parts in the expected places, nothing notably over- or undersized. I was five eleven and loved having her come just up to my chest when we embraced, loved that I was able to scoop her up with ease and carry her across the hotel room threshold on our wedding day.

Since she’d gotten pregnant, however, I found myself spending an increasing amount of time appreciating her shifting topography. The breasts I had cuddled and taken for granted had gone from oranges to grapefruits and seemed to be still ripening. Her heart-shaped face took on a permanent glow – was it a trick of the light that her cheeks seemed rounder, her chin a trifle softer? Her once-pert bottom seemed to be softening and swelling just a bit, providing more of a foundation for that wondrous belly.

Ah, the belly. Sweet Jesus, the belly. Once upon a time – I had only to look at our wedding photos – Wendy’s belly had been … well … basic. It dented in where it was meant to, curved out to your standard hips, and was punctuated with an adorable belly button.

It had been Wendy’s belly that I had had the pleasure of frankly admiring of late. First had come the “pregnancy pooch,” as Wendy had happily informed me, the little sticking-out of the tummy that made waistbands tight even before she’d gained so much as a pound. Slowly, steadily, that pooch had rounded to a soccer ball and then to a beach ball. She was more than halfway along now, due in September, and I had watched my wife’s petite figure become gorgeously less so with every passing week. How much of it was baby and how much was eating for two? I hadn’t a clue, and didn’t care. I enjoyed nothing more than “pampering” her, as she put it, by gently massaging lotion into her dome of a tummy, spreading my palm on it and marveling that my large hand no longer covered it as it once had, dusting the belly with scented powder, reveling in the warmth she radiated. It was like sleeping with a one-person potbellied stove.

I came back to the present with a start as Will thumped onto the bench next to me. I managed to grin convincingly at him and trotted back out onto the field.

After our game (and after we’d availed ourselves of the park’s shower room), we filled a booth at a nearby burger joint. I ordered my usual without thinking, and only after it arrived did I give a second thought to the mountain of fries, crisp, perfectly seasoned … and likely to go straight to my gut.

Avery noticed the face I made. “Elliott. ’sup?”

“I, uh … I dunno. Putting on a few pounds, I guess.” Defiantly I grabbed a handful.

Chris snorted. “Eating for two.”

“No, that’s … wait, what?” I must have looked as puzzled as I felt.

Chris grinned. “Same thing happened to my brother when his wife babied up,” he elaborated. “Wife gets pregnant, the guy starts eating for two.” He winked.

“Better step up the football games, yo,” Cal drawled easily, grabbing a few of my fries.

“Yo,” I countered weakly, grabbing one of his huge onion rings as payback.

At home, though, as I puttered in the garden, I thought about the conversation at lunch. Thought about the way my shorts had grabbed at my waist. Thought about the way I’d had to take a breather. Thought about asking Wendy if I’d gained weight, then jettisoned the question as a nonstarter. I would have to moderate my intake, that was all. I stood up, dusted off my knees, and told myself virtuously that gardening was exercise. I went back in and treated myself to a baseball game and a beer. Well, okay, two. The A’s were stinking up the joint; I was entitled.

Wendy was far enough along to have started what the books called nesting, which, it seemed, included doing a Martha Stewart in the kitchen. She had bought cookbooks and was using them with a vengeance. Even though it was a Saturday – maybe because it was a Saturday – she had produced silken garlic mashed potatoes, roast chicken with rosemary, lima beans, creamed peas, rolls (okay, store bought, but who cared?). I tucked in enthusiastically and forgot all about moderation. Then I drained my glass for the second time, scraped the last traces of third helpings off my plate, and stood to clear the table.

Oof. I hiccupped. “Ate too much, I guess,” I mumbled, flushing at Wendy’s gaze. She was laughing at me! I patted my full stomach, warm and heavy. “Eating for two.” Holy cow, maybe Chris was right.

“Someone’s getting a daddy tummy,” Wendy sang. She side-hugged me as I stood at the sink.

“Someone’s an awfully good cook,” I replied. She brightened.

Later, when she brought in a big just-baked brownie smothered in ice cream, I didn’t say no. Even if I should have.

She snuggled next to me – she used to tuck her legs up under her, but she couldn’t do that anymore – and took the spoon from my hand. To snitch a bite, I thought. She scooped up a generous mouthful … and poked it at me. Automatically I opened up.

“Mmf,” I said around the rich, creamy, warm, cold bite, the contrasts and tastes making me shudder with pleasure. I licked a trace of hot fudge from my lower lip. “I can feed myself,” I said mildly.

“I know that, silly.” She spooned up another bite. “But I like to feed you dessert.”

I obediently took the next mouthful, but turned my head away from the third. “Wendy. I’m getting fat.”

“Daddy tummy, that’s all.” Wendy deflected my tentative statement airily. She patted my belly, still gorged and aching from too much dinner. “The books all say the daddy gains sympathy weight.”

“Yeah, but yours goes away, right?”

“So?” She kept pushing the spoon against my lips. I gave in. It was easier, and besides, I didn’t want it dripping against the shirt. I liked this shirt; pity I wouldn’t be able to wear it much longer. Whoa, where had that thought come from? I glanced downward as I swallowed. The fabric tugged snugly against my bloated stomach. Big meal, that was all. I tuned back in.

“…don’t need to be a stick figure, anyway,” Wendy said.

I was getting sleepy. I grunted in agreement and let her feed me the rest of the bowl’s worth of sweet sin. Delicious. I licked my lips and felt my eyelids slamming shut. Oh, my stomach ached – warm, full, satisfyingly heavy. There was something inexplicably pleasing in the ache, in the tug and stretch of gut, in having filled and overfilled the stomach, a primal need.

“Goin’ to bed,” I mumbled, my voice thick with drowsiness.

“Right behind you,” Wendy said. She sounded sleepy too. As if to prove it, she yawned hugely. “Oh…”

The next morning, over cinnamon rolls, we bantered around for the dozenth time the idea of going to church. We had both been brought up church-goers and liked the idea of that kind of framework for the baby, but neither of us had been in years.

Finally, sugared up on coffee and sweet rolls, we flipped open the Yellow Pages, found the listing for churches. Wendy superstitiously held the section in her hand, closed her eyes, let it flop open and pointed. She opened her eyes. Her finger had landed on a small boxed listing for Epiphany Lutheran Church on Dover Avenue.

“Oh, I know where that is,” I said absently. Wendy clapped her hands.

“Let’s go, Elliott, please?”

“Sure, okay. I don’t have to wear a tie, do I?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Wendy said, hauling herself to her feet. “Polo shirt, khakis.”

I showered and shaved, emerging to find Wendy in the pink maternity dress, her only dressy one, with the zipper gaping. “Zip me up,” she commanded. “Why in the world they make maternity wear that does up the back…”

“Can’t imagine.” I got her zipped and we changed places so she could have the mirror while I headed for the closet.

The polo I chose was not as baggy as I’d remembered, and the khakis hitched as though they’d somehow shrunk. They weren’t new – it wasn’t that – but they caught round my thighs. I huffed and tugged and felt myself turning red with effort before I finally got the pesky things hitched, and immediately decided to wear the shirt untucked. Looked better that way, anyhow.

At the church, we were greeted nicely enough, but not pounced on. A lot of people seemed to be wearing red. It turned out to be Pentecost, the sermon about the birth of the church. The service was wordy, with a lot of responses printed in the bulletin, but afterward there was a potluck lunch. We found ourselves at a table with two other couples, one gray-haired pair and one about our age. Everyone carried on about Wendy’s bun in the oven and I, happily, was left mostly alone, content to sample a disgraceful variety of potluck goodies.

Too many, of course, and I barely managed not to grunt aloud as we stood to go. The waistband of those khakis was pinching much too much for comfort. I undid the button before thumping into the driver’s seat, and it was with embarrassing relief that I stripped to skivvies for a Sunday afternoon nap.

The same khakis, a bit stretched out after the previous day’s outing, served for work the next day, but Wendy ambushed me as soon as I got home.

“Dinner out at the mall and shopping,” she begged. “I’m tired of having only one good maternity dress, and anyway, if we go back to that church I can’t keep wearing it.” I didn’t see why not, but I’d learned not to argue.

While she browsed happily, I slipped away to the menswear store next door and prudently stocked up on several pairs of trousers a size larger in the waist. Temporarily, of course.

The summer spooled on. I kept up the Saturday football, even though I was more winded by the week – the heat, I figured – and we took to attending church every couple of weeks, even though Wendy got too big for the kneeling bit.

Somehow, with the birth imminent, the problem of my shrinking waistbands slid down the priority list. I’d become blandly tolerant of my sympathy belly and hardly gave it a thought; the new khakis, more generously cut, helped push the niggling worry out of my head. Wendy certainly didn’t seem to mind. If she did, she never said anything. I cut back a little on the fries and third helpings … when I remembered to.

Then Olivia Jane was born. Oh, dear. Why hadn’t anyone told us what a miracle it was to hold our own baby in our arms and see those eternal, unblinking blue eyes staring back? I went gooshy in the knees and stayed that way for weeks.

Sleep became a distant memory. Somehow, we didn’t mind. Wendy sometimes wept from weariness during 3 a.m. nursings, but she swore she was okay – and seemed it, too. I took to making dinner, to give her a break, and got rather good at it, if I do say so.

I dimly remembered reading somewhere that nursing took off the pregnancy weight, but Wendy had retained a much softer bottom and, of course, breathtaking, distracting breasts. Her tummy was no longer firm and domelike, but I was jolted by the pleasure to be found in snuggling against the soft pads of postpartum flesh that had never been there before. I certainly wasn’t in any hurry for her old, pre-pregnancy figure. I liked Wendy 2.0 much better. Drawing her to me and feeling the softness of breast and belly, getting my hands on full, womanly hips and bottom gave me a surge of pleasure every time.

Wendy wasn’t so sure. She lifted her shirt instead of tugging it down after feeding Olivia one evening. “I thought I would slim back down,” she grumbled.

I listened absently to her tone as I patted the tiny baby resting on my shoulder. “I love how you look,” I said. I handed Olivia back and tugged up my own shirt. “I, on the other hand, have no excuse.”

“Your own cooking,” Wendy said, giving me a poke in the belly. A belly that had become not smaller but larger since September. “I’m not saying I want the kitchen back,” she added hastily. “It’s lovely having supper taken care of every night.”

I licked my lips for traces of that evening’s lasagna. I’d made it with ground pork as well as ground beef, and slathered on the ricotta-sauce mix. And I’d done my share of damage to the garlic bread as well, and the salad that had seemed huge was history, though Wendy had surely helped.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” I said, thinking out loud. “I have time for roast chicken.”

“Stuffing?” Wendy groaned, her lips curving upward, her complaint forgotten.

“Stuffing,” I replied. Olivia burped.

I hung onto my new role as supper chef, Wendy groused no more (to me, at least) about not instantly springing back into her pre-baby shape, and things were fine. At least I thought they were.

The ribbing I started getting at work was not terribly subtle – guys don’t generally do subtle.

“Hey, Daddy-o,” Cal had said, slapping me on the shoulder one morning as I snapped up a doughnut from the open box in the break room. He eyed my steadily thickening waistline. “Got yourself a doughnut, there.” He didn’t mean the cream-filled in my hand.

I drew in my breath. Then shrugged. “Whatever,” I said lightly. “Wendy doesn’t mind.” I didn’t know exactly how true that was.

Cal cocked an eyebrow, but said nothing more. After that Saturday’s game, it was Andy who noticed that I’d cleaned my plate a lot quicker than the rest of them.

“Stockin’ up, there, New Dad?”

I looked down. I hadn’t realized my plate was empty. It seems that I had even eaten the pickle and the lettuce leaf on which the burger had sat.

I burped. Quite by accident, and the comment was whisked away amid laughter. I drained my beer and decided against another one.

When I got home, Wendy was in a cheery mood, which brightened the little clouds hanging over me about Andy’s offhand comment at lunch.

Her Mommy & Me playgroup had had a picnic, and outdoors, in the dappled sunlight under the trees, Wendy had noticed for the first time that she wasn’t the only new mom with flabbier thighs, softer belly, a little jiggle in the arms when picking up the baby.

“I never married a supermodel, anyway,” I said, nuzzling her neck as she put together a salad. “All they do is pluck things and throw up.”

“That’s my poet,” Wendy giggled, reaching around me to sneak an almond. “Hey, our tummies match.”

I put down the knife. “Wendy.”

“Mm?” She was back to the salad.

“I’ve, um, I’ve been … kinda … packing it on, you know?”

“Mm.”

“Does it, um, worry you?”

“Do the words ‘I never married a supermodel’ sound familiar?” She was back, reaching around me, for another almond, I thought. Instead she was hugging me from behind, and her hands lingered over my increasingly softer tummy and slid up toward my chest, which was getting flabby. If I slouched, I looked like I had breasts, a little.

Now she was standing on tiptoe, nuzzling as high as she could reach, which was my shoulder blades. “I think it’s cute,” she said, her voice muffled against my shirt.

I turned awkwardly in her embrace and slid my hands along her softening sides, cradling the cushion of her lovely love handles.

“I … don’t think …” I mumbled between kisses, my hands busy on her distractingly lovely cushion of backside, “that … either of us … needs to be … in any hurry about … mmm … that baby weight … baby.”

Four months later, Wendy wriggled into her new dress, blue florals on a black background with a high waist that showcased her tantalizingly full bosom. I grinned at her tousled hair as I enjoyed the ease of fastening a trousers zipper and hook that didn’t grab, at least not for the moment. So what if the trousers were somewhat larger in the waist? No one was going to see the sizing. They hung just fine, broke right at the instep, and – more importantly – comfortably encircled my noticeably broader belly. The new shirt, which had seemed enormous on the hanger, buttoned just right down my chest and over my expanse of midsection. The jacket hung comfortably, and when I looked in the mirror, I was pretty pleased.

Since Wendy had gotten pregnant, she had gained 70 pounds … lost 30 with Olivia’s birth … and gained another twenty. Those postpartum pounds had changed her from averagely pretty to heart-stoppingly memorable. My petite wife was now bountifully curvaceous, and when I grabbed her around the waist, as I did now, I felt not rib bones but a pleasing cushion, her soft, inviting belly dimpled with navel and padded with a pleasing pillow of pulchitrude. Her hips rounded gorgeously, giving the dress some serious oomph, and already I found myself thinking about the advantages of a wintry Sunday afternoon, with the clouds low, the newly baptized baby asleep in the crib, and Mom and Dad taking a “nap.”

Wendy pulled back from my embrace just enough to run her hands down my front, tripping from button to button and stopping to poke a plump finger into my navel. That navel was now definitely an innie, a deep little crevice punctuating a smooth dome of a gut. My waistline, which had been relentlessly widening for almost a year now, had marched upward from somewhere in the realm of 32 to somewhere in the realm of 44. My belly protruded into a kingdom where no amount of sucking in (not that I ever bothered anymore) could prevail, below a chest on which pecs had definitely become thick pads of flesh. Along the sides, love handles when I stood up straight became part of an impressive spare tire when I sat. My jutting chin was now surrounded by a hammock of doubling that softened the effect and swelled into apple cheeks and matching pads below my eyes. When Wendy had conceived, I had been dancing around 200 – now 200 sat on the sidelines and the scale, when I went near it, tended to read back somewhere between 260 and 275, depending on the season.

A gurgle from the crib broke the spell. I padded over in sock feet and lifted up Olivia, at six months all wide eyes and irresistible baby smiles, and smoothed the front of the white baptismal dress, which had been Wendy’s and Wendy’s mother’s.

“Da,” she said, and batted my second chin. “Da.”

I scooped her up with one arm and put the other one around Wendy, then let it slip down to her hip, which got one more little squeeze for the road. One big happy family.

 

[Ssaylleb]

 

[mddubya]

 

[youngfeeder132]

 

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