Maternity Clothes

Before I start writing about maternity clothes, I feel like I should start off by giving 2 caveats:
1.  I am 5'9'' so I didn't start really showing till about 20 weeks.
2. I didn't believe in spending a lot of money on maternity clothes so I didn't do a lot of research on the higher end clothing but I'm an expert on the middle to low range stuff so I'll be talking about that here.

Maternity clothing is a funny thing.  When women buy clothing they buy it for a season and they assume that while they wear it they're bodies won't be changing all that much.  They can shop at the beginning of a season and expect it to last throughout that season and perhaps even into the next.  Maternity clothes on the other hand have a lot more of a finite life span.

Something else to keep in mind when shopping for maternity clothes, is that you should be looking for your pre-maternity size clothes in maternity.  If you go up a size, generally it will just look baggy and big.  The maternity cut clothes account for your growing body, so you don't need to go up a size.

Additionally, if you choose to buy non maternity clothes to wear while pregnant it can be a little tricky to do that.  for items that are tight, and body-hugging you can go up to bigger sizes (be careful of materials that stretch because the colors will look washed out as the fabric stretches to accommodate your growing belly).  If you are going to get something in a bigger size that is loose fitting, be careful about that too because sometimes bigger clothes will just make you look bigger (fatter, sorry) rather than pregnant.

I started shopping for maternity clothing in early June (I am due in November) so I was barely showing.  I was hoping to be able to buy enough clothes in one shot that I didn't have to keep going back for more.

My first stop was Destination Maternity.  This place has multiple stores in one.  The Pea in the Pod is their highest end line.  I wasn't interested in spending multiple hundreds of dollars per item for maternity clothes (I don't even do that for regular clothes) so I focused on their Motherhood section.  I primarily shopped in the Manhattan store which I found to have a decent selection but was also often hit or miss.  I did have good luck there though.  Especially in the sale department.  I got a lot of stuff on sale - including some Pea in the Pod items.

Another thing about DM is that in the changing rooms they have baby bumps that you can try on with the clothing.  These are great, theoretically.  They give you a sense of what something will look like with a bump.  But what they don't do is account for the other parts of your body that grow - your boobs and butt will most likely get bigger, so if you're trying on dresses, keep in mind that the dress will most definitely get shorter.  I had a to return a bunch of things because after putting it back on a month later, a formerly knee length dress was now mid-thigh.

They have a 30-day return policy, and after that I was able to get store credit.  But the good thing about store credit is that they don't only sell clothes.  You can get other baby and maternity accouterments OR, even better, put the money to their spa.  They have the Edamame spa on site where you can get massages and facials and they also have a Yoga/Pilates studio you can put the money to.  So even if you have to return something for credit, there are lots of places you can put it.

The other place I had luck was at Old Navy.  Many of the stores have pretty limited maternity options, but their online shop was great.  Really reasonable prices, nice, trendy stuff that actually held up really well.  The online store has free shipping in both directions.  One of their great staples are their maternity tights.  If you need tights, get them there.  Their leggings are not so comfortable, better off getting those at Destination Maternity.

Some other decent options are Target, Asos and Amazon.  I got jeans at Target and they were super comfortable.  Amazon and Asos had a nice selections of items, but to be honest I didn't get anything there.

Happy Shopping!