At 17 weeks, I think I’m in the awkward stage of pregnancy. In my first trimester, as long as I ate constantly, I rarely threw up but I did have the general miserable feeling. I heard this would likely go away in second trimester and I would start glowing. In fact, several people have claimed that I’m glowing now but I think it’s their imagination. It wasn’t until around week 16 that I started feeling normal again. However, “normal” now feels strange. I’m back to the strange feeling that I’m not pregnant after all. Allegedly I might feel baby move any day now but so far nothing (though I understand this is normal with first babies).
This awkward feeling extends to my wardrobe. A couple of years ago I lost about 20 pounds. Once my normal clothes were too tight, I switched to my bigger, older clothes. In fact, this might be the first time since my teen years that the clothing manufacturers and I agree what the waist to hip ratio should be. Previously, it was the rare pair of pants that didn’t require belt. However, the days of my larger clothes fitting are almost gone. I’ve slowly started to ease into maternity clothing. However, I’m still too small for most of them to fit comfortably.
Monday I went shopping for maternity clothing. I’ve already determined that the thrift stores have almost no maternity clothing. I don’t remember the last time I paid more than $20 for a single piece of clothing and I had no urge to start. However, maternity clothing is expensive. Fortunately, I found a used maternity clothing store called Fuzzy Kiwi. It has odd hours but my day off was Monday so I managed to get down there to view their selection. There were still too many items that fit awkwardly on me but I did manage to buy a couple of items that look decent, or will soon. The prices were more than I’d pay at a thrift store (and I did go over the $20 mark for some dresses) but it was still significantly cheaper than new. I stopped by Target on the way home and was pleasantly surprised to find a good pair of maternity work pants for a very reasonable price. (I mention that I don’t believe in paying too much money for clothes but I also like high quality clothing which usually has meant avoiding Target/Walmart/etc. Thrift stores provide much better quality clothing at cheaper prices).
Hopefully, I have enough clothing to last me for a couple more months. While I know I’m going to need more clothes, I doubt I’ll look forward to clothes shopping until after baby has arrived.
I am also cheap about clothes. Several friends gave me a few maternity clothes items, but I had to resort to Motherhood Maternity for work pants (all the ones at Target were far too long) and, later (on clearance) a sweater. If you can find items on sale or clearance at Motherhood, they’re not too badly priced, though for t-shirts and the like I recommend yard sales or Shopko – Target type stores.
I’m glad you’re over the first trimester sickness. I gained at least 10 pounds the first trimester also: eating was the only way to keep from spending the day in the bathroom heaving or dry heaving. Of course, now, at week 31, all that first trimester weight is counting into my total weight gain. Sigh. I say, as long as you’re being healthy overall, don’t sweat it too much.