retail therapy, 18 weeks, 4 days

I really wanted to wear a muumuu for the next twenty weeks. I swear. Interspersed with a few clutch academic robes, beach towels and assorted capes. I really did. But here’s the thing – I got this new lawyer job where I have to like, be “professional” and act in a “supervisory role” and “model good behavior for students”[1] and “appear in a court of law”, etc.

Which can mean only one thing, dear readers: we have reached the grim maternity milestone of <dun dun dun> maternity clothes shopping! Thankfully, my parents were in town and my mother was happy to oblige (and C and my dad were happy to get all gendered about it and go to a baseball game).

The next few hours are something of a dizzying frenzy.  Like many of these new frontiers in the land of baby-making-conceiving-and-all-things-utero, it was quite the ethnographic experience[2].

For starters: did you know that maternity stores have bathrooms? BATHROOMS! Private. Bathrooms. For. Pregnant. Ladies (andtheirmothers). Toilet paper and everything. It’s a low bar in the fast world of retail, people.

After that order of business was taken care of because havetopeeallthetime, we moved on to more important matters. Specifically: FAUX BUMP[3]!

"What's that? You want me to put you on?"

Admittedly, I’m probably a little behind the bump[4] curve on this. But you guys – maternity stores have faux bumps that you velcro around your burgeoning gut to simulate the experience, fit and general ridiculousness of being 9 months pregnant.

You walk into the dressing room and it’s just like, you know, hanging there on the back of the door, real innocent like. And then, like a dutiful shopper without a mind of her own and under the tutelage of the scrawny 21 year old saleswoman who is INCREDIBLY PERKY and wants to know if-you’re-having-a-boy!-and-do-you-have-a-name!-and-is-this-the-first-grandchild!-and-we’re-all-snorting-Adderal-in-the-employee-lounge!, you promptly put that padded-everloving-bump on and proceed to wistfully ponder the following:

(1) It is really, really hard to reach my shoes. Thank goodness they’re flip flops <relief>. (And then, moments later) Well, I guess I’ll be wearing some version of slip-on-flip-flop-flat until December. <deep sigh>.

(2) What’s that? Am I waddling? You think my gait has changed dramatically with the simple addition of this enormous foam padding?

(3) I have swallowed a beach ball.

(4) Many other women have worn this against their bare skin. <Trying not to think about how many other women have worn this against their bare skin...calling mother’s name in terror, begging her to procure tank top>

So where were we. The bump. Which I guess, more than anything, left me feeling like a 15 year old in an at risk youth after school program – like next I’d get my lifelike doll to take home for the night, and see how you like a crying infant now! And then I would always make my boyfriend wear a condom cause shit just got real, we’re too young!, etc. Or maybe that’s just a Lifetime movie I saw once.[5]

The point is, the bump worked it’s magic and my patient and generous mother made me try on LITERALLY EVERYTHING at Pea in the Pod. And I am now the proud of owner of six mildly professional[6], properly fitting, maternity getups, which will be in heavy rotation for the next twenty weeks[7]. Of course, since there are only six outfits, I will reserve Sunday as muumuu day[8]. Naturally.[9]

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[1] Crap. This sounds an awful lot like “parenting”… <backs out of room slowly>.

[2] And I’m sure that my anthropologist readers can chime in and quibble with my use of ethnographic, reference the Trobriander of Papua New Guinea and so forth. Seriously though, I have no idea what I’m talking about.

[3] In related news, this is an ENTIRE INDUSTRY. Because, umm, yes?

[4] Too easy.

[5] Speaking of which, how come the nervous teenager in the Lifetime movie never subsequently finds out that 10 years of birth control were a colossal waste of money and anxiety and that her best hope of getting pregnant will be in a petri dish? I mean seriously. That’s a missed opportunity if I ever saw one. On a related note, I see a future in filmmaking.

[6] Dark skinny jeans are “mildly professional”, right? RIGHT!  (For the record – which I’m sure one of you/”the man” is keeping: AG maternity jeans are basically glorified sweatpants and I will never ever take them off, ever again. Mostly because I have to justify just how expensive they were.)

[7] Strike that. Let’s get real and go with 30. I have a feeling I may be slow to lose this, ahem, “maternity weight.”

[8] During which time I will eat bon bons and use my muumuu as an oversized napkin. It will be divine.

[9] And (most) joking aside, I found Pea in the Pod to actually, kind of, have decent stuff. (And no, no one paid me for that mediocre endorsement - the CEO of Pea in the Pod is probably having a conniption now that her store has been mentioned in the likes of this riff-raff blog). Along with Gap maternity and ASOS. And that wraps up my official where-to-shop-when-pregnant user manual. <curtsy>.