Maternity Clothes

The past couple of weeks I've been trying to determine when it's appropriate to start wearing maternity clothes. I'm not really showing yet, and I haven't gained any weight. However, the waistband of my pants has been irritating me while sitting for hours at work. So much so that I'll sit all day with my pants unbuttoned - which makes it awkward when I have to stand up to make copies or run something to someone else office.

On Friday Ryan asked if I wanted to go to dinner with a few guys from work for one of their birthdays. I agreed and decided before going out in public with unbuttoned pants at a dinner table I would be buying myself a pair of maternity pants. I figured I'd get one pair and try them out just to see if it really was the pants or just discomfort from sitting. I went to Old Navy because I knew they had maternity clothes, they were cheap and generally their clothes are fairly cute.

I went in and went straight to the department that NO ONE else was shopping in. The maternity section seemed fairly small and super cluttered. It was overwhelming. I'm the type of person who likes to go to stores like Gap or Banana Republic because it's so nice to walk in a store, have all the clothes neatly layed out and sized, making it super easy to find exactly what it is I'm looking for.

I toughed it out though, and found a few things to try on including 2 pair of jeans, some cords, a little sun dress and a pair of bermuda shorts. The cords were horrible and I wasn't nearly big enough for them yet. Both pair of jeans were pretty comfortable and the shorts and sun dress were so cheap that I couldn't resist (for the cruise that's right around the corner). I ended up picking one of the pair of jeans as my pants of choice.

That night I put on the jeans for dinner and found that they solved the problem enough to go out and buy a couple more pair of these stretchy wonders for work.

Saturday I went out with Katy and hit up the Gap Maternity section in the mall. Lucky me, the pants were buy one get one 1/2 off. I walked out with a pair of khaki-type pants and a pair of black pants that should get me through for now. In addition, I scored a cute pair of white capris for THREE dollars that (again) would be great for the cruise. Sweet!

I'm still not in the shirt-shopping range as far as my size, but at least I found some fairly cute options for later.