This preg­nancy is prov­ing to be dif­fer­ent in pretty much every way with the excep­tion that I don’t have to buy tam­pons for its dura­tion. Hav­ing said that, the rea­son I’m writ­ing is because I can’t find any freakin’ clothes to wear! You see, when my hus­band and I pur­chased our home in this quaint North­ern Vir­ginia town we didn’t real­ize that decent shop­ping was an hour away! I refuse to wear any­thing dowdy, that has ducks on it, or is just plain ugly which unfor­tu­nately is all that I am able to find at my local stores. It’s times like this when I wish I was still liv­ing in Miami. Shop­ping there is in a word… awe­some. So I’ve been rel­e­gated to shop­ping online, which I nor­mally wouldn’t have a prob­lem with, but when a woman is preg­nant half the fun is going shop­ping and try­ing on clothes that enhance the changes tak­ing shape within her womb.

My trou­ble really isn’t because there aren’t any stores, (we do have a few) it’s that they don’t carry clothes that fit me. I’m a plus size gal, and appar­ently the cloth­ing stores/manufacturers seem to think that fat girls don’t like to look pretty, nor sexy, or fem­i­nine. Instead, my local Moth­er­hood store has rel­e­gated all the fat girls (and I have to say, there must be a bunch of us, plus size pre­gos out there who shop at Moth­er­hood) because on the one rack, and small lit­tle bit of wall space, way in the back cor­ner of the store, there’s prac­ti­cally noth­ing ever avail­able. Wait, I lie, there’s noth­ing avail­able that is fash­ion­able. It’s mostly career stuff (which isn’t help­ful to a SAHM such as myself, or ugly pat­terned shirts. Unfazed, I decided to head for Old Navy, and was crushed to find that they only carry “reg­u­lar” mater­nity sizes, and no extended sizes. Accord­ing to Planned Par­ent­hood “Half of all women of child­bear­ing age in the United States are con­sid­ered over­weight”, so why aren’t man­u­fac­tur­ers cater­ing to the curvy woman? If I were a lib­eral I’d be scream­ing about reverse dis­crim­i­na­tion or try­ing to fig­ure out who I can sue for hav­ing to go to so much trou­ble to find nice cloth­ing. Hav­ing said that, I am annoyed because of the incon­ve­nience. Sure, there are stores like Lane Bryant who not only cater to the plus sized woman, but now carry mater­nity clothes, my ever trusty GAP, and of course when all else fails there’s always eBay! The prob­lem I have, which is prob­a­bly the real rea­son I’m writ­ing is because I’ve had to shop online, and I really want to be able to go to a store, feel the fab­ric, and put it on. I’ve now pur­chased 4 pairs of jeans. Two of which I can wear, and of the other two pair one gave me a rash, because the fab­ric was so stiff and hard and the other I could go swim­ming in. I’ll inevitably donate these to my local Good­will. They were eBay pur­chases so that’s the gam­ble one takes when shop­ping at the auc­tion pow­er­house, and frankly I’m at the moment feel­ing a bit too lazy to take the twenty or so min­utes it would take me to list them to get them resold.

Self por­trait me, at 17 weeks.

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