One nice thing about my pregnancy is that I haven’t had to buy any maternity clothes. Oh, believe me, I couldn’t have gotten this far without them. There came a point, somewhere around 4 months, when normal pants just didn’t fit around my belly anymore, even if they were a size too large and made from stretchy material. No, I just got lucky because my mom took me shopping and bought me enough outfits to get me through the first two trimesters.
My sister-in-law also gave me tons of second-hand maternity clothes, some from her two pregnancies, some from her sister-in-law’s. Since most of the clothes were for warmer weather, I haven’t had much use for them until now. I went through them again this week and found a few more wearable items. They should be enough to get me through most situations, the one exception being Faithful Reader’s cousin’s wedding. That is, if we can go. Her wedding is scheduled for the day before my due date!
During my months of wearing maternity clothes, I have developed a love-hate relationship with them. On one hand, I hate the poor quality and the lint-attracting capabilities. The limited sizing is also ridiculous—just S, M, L, XL, and XXL, even for pants, with no consideration for height or stage of pregnancy—and the sizes are so inconsistent that I might wear anything from a medium to an extra-large. On the other hand, I love the convenience and comfort that maternity clothes offer. They go on easy and there are no buttons or zippers to worry about. Most of the pants have elastic panels in the waist, which can be very comfortable. But even this has a drawback. Some of the pants just won’t stay up and I find myself constantly tugging at them.
Readjusting my clothes is one of those things that once upon a time I would only have done out of public sight (i.e., at home or in the privacy of a bathroom), but pregnancy has given me the courage to readjust anywhere. This courage springs from a combination of necessity and self-righteousness. If you went to the bathroom every time you needed to readjust, between that and your real bathroom breaks, you’d be in there all day. It is also better to readjust than to show your privates in public. That’s the necessity half of the equation. Pregnancy also gives you a feeling of being justified in behavior that’s normally not socially condoned, because you know that people will cut you some slack out of sympathy and respect for your physical condition. If they don’t, then they should, dammit! This attitude doesn’t just apply to clothing readjustments, but also to audible burps, absent-minded belly rubbing, putting your feet up whenever you feel like it, and other such “unladylike” behaviors.
There are other good social benefits of being pregnant too. For one thing, it provides an endless amount of conversation, at least at first. People who are good at small talk may not appreciate the benefit, but if you’re like me, confined mostly to weather-related subjects, pregnancy is the best conversation source ever invented. People can’t help but ask you questions—how are you feeling? when are you due? which hospital will you use? will you nurse? Answering them is easy. The only problem is that you get sick of the subject, begin to hate the way it dominates the conversation, and start subtly trying to steer the talk toward other topics. In other words, you start learning better conversation skills!
I haven’t quite gotten the knack of it, as I found yesterday at the wedding shower for that cousin I mentioned earlier. I did my best, but Baby was still Topic #1. But then, he is going to be the cutest baby in the world, so doesn’t he deserve to be Topic #1?
🙂