1. Maternity pants were designed by sadistic people who have never gained 10 pounds only in the belly area. Forget what Rachel wore on Friends; every hideous thing you’ve heard about maternity clothes is true.
2. These pants have no waistbands and simply fall down if they are too big. I have vowed not to venture out in public in sweats (this is why I worked so hard to have a “real” job with a real grown-up wardrobe, people), but I can totally sympathize with the people who give up and live in PJ’s for 9 months. No one tells you there will be several weeks, at least, between the time you can’t breathe in any of your pants and the time maternity pants don’t make you look like you’re playing some bizarre dress-up game.
3. Maternity clothes never, never go on sale. They know you have to buy them eventually in whatever season you are in at the time, so they have no incentive to have those fabulous clearance sales I love. I have never bought so many full-price items in my life, other that what I found at consignment stores.
4. Maternity clothes appear to fall into two categories: those that make you look like a nun, and those that make you look like Lil Kim. For those of you who know me well, you know I paid a lot of money for significantly smaller cleavage. However, I do not go many places where revealing my chest down to the navel is acceptable, and I can’t imagine wanting to do this anyway, pregnant or not. Maybe the idea is to overcompensate and hope people will be so distracted by your chest that no one will notice you are growing a human being. However, the alternative is to look like I’m wearing a potato sack. What about all the normal people with normal jobs?
5. Men will leer at you and whistle, pregnant or not. Though I’m sure I will long for this type of boorish behavior a few months from now, I have had three separate times when men have done that thing that men do. You know–the girl walks past, and the man/men (assuming that all cute women are also deaf and blind and will not notice them), make some strange sound/comment/attempt-to-make-her-realize-they’d-be-the-perfect-couple within her earshot or immediate line of sight. Seriously, when was the last time you met a couple who got together this way? Though I haven’t done it yet, I had an overwhelming urge to whirl around and say “Oh, thank God–I’ve been looking for someone just like you! Will you be my baby’s daddy?” That should shut him up.
Enough of my ranting for now. I am quite thankful for friends who are willing to be dragged along to look at maternity clothes and other assorted baby things without complaint. Thanks, Shannon! Also, Andrew has wisely kept quiet whenever I have whined about having nothing to wear and joked/fretted about getting fat. The poor guy is getting the brunt of my pregnancy-induced craziness and handling it like a champ.
Actually, this was quite fun. This pregnancy thing can only get funnier, I imagine!
