The Well-Dressed Belly

This is what Miss wore to school yesterday.

Adorable, yes?

Why is it that I can find such wonderful clothes for my children, and yet it is so difficult to find simply practical, comfortable, and attractive maternity clothing for myself?  Set aside the fact that I spend much more time and am much more interested in finding fabulous things for my kids.  That’s a given.  But, I should still be able to find decent stuff to help me look nice through the 6-ish months of my pregnancy when I can’t fit into my regular clothes anymore.  Right?

Now I will concede that I have found some nice casual and everyday work clothes for this pregnancy.  I refused to spend much money on maternity clothes when I was pregnant with Miss, which resulted in me buying mostly junk that is no longer wearable this time around, and the clothes I have from my pregnancy with Lass are mostly not appropriate because of different seasons.  So, I had to buy some new maternity clothes recently.  Plus, with this being my third pregnancy in three years, I really was just sick of looking dumpy.  This time I invested in a few nice new items, and some great jewelry (check out this Etsy shop), so that I will be a little more comfortable and stylish for the next 5-6 months.

Unfortunately, I have never needed, and have not wanted to invest in a maternity business suit, so when I got the call two days ago that I needed to appear in court to provide expert witness testimony today, I had nothing to wear!  I went to every maternity store nearby and several department stores with pitifully small maternity sections.  I couldn’t find a suit, though I’m not sure I really expected to.  I would have settled for a nice blazer that I could wear with the black maternity pants I already have.  But no.  I found one jacket that was horridly ugly and much too short to wear over any other maternity shirt without it hanging out the bottom (and one can’t exactly tuck a shirt in to maternity pants).  I didn’t have time to find and order anything online.  I was frantically searching the stores for other nice business attire and was shocked to find how casual most of the “business” maternity clothing out there is.  Now, I suppose for many work situations, the things I saw would be fine.  But surely there are pregnant women out there who have to wear a business suit or at least a jacket to work on a regular basis.  Right?  Where are these elusive suits?  Why is a maternity blazer so horrid-looking?  These are the questions I was asking myself as I walked into court this morning wearing my black pants, a button up shirt I purchased when pregnant with Miss (couldn’t even find a nice one of these in the past two days!), and a black cardigan sweater that sort of, very loosely, approximated a business-jacket-type look.  I felt woefully underdressed.

Fortunately, my testimony went well.  I’m sure no one else was nearly as concerned about my lack of a suit as I was.  And most importantly, my girls looked adorable today.

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One thought on “The Well-Dressed Belly

  1. I was trying to find pretty, contemporary-looking maternity wear for my daughter-in-law, without it looking like teen or sport attire, and a) most stores simply don’t carry any at all, and b) even the maternity stores carry a poor selection of trendy knit wear. Ugh. I feel bad for you. But you’d look great anywhere! 🙂

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