Dressing my pregnant self

dress: Monica's Closet Essentials

This dress may be my favorite maxi dress I own.  I won a credit to this store and am SO happy with my choice. I know I will get lots of wear out of it! 

After this last pregnancy recap, I intended to do another at 30 weeks but here I am four weeks late. Oops! 

While one of the biggest lessons I have learned is that every pregnant woman is so different, and you can only take so much advice from someone as I think you have to live it yourself, I thought maybe it'd be helpful to share a few things I've learned about dressing my pregnant self: 

1. I'd have to say that weeks 27 to 33 were probably my favorite weeks in terms of how I looked pregnant.  I was passed the stage of just feeling like I gained a lot of weight and finally had a hard, pregnant looking belly.  

2. I probably bought way more maternity clothes than I really needed, but I'm okay with that as I was SO excited to finally be pregnant and still did not spend much money as most were pretty cheap!  I bought a handful of things well before getting pregnant when I saw them on sale and then most of the rest near the beginning.  If I would've held off a little longer I would have realized that I there were some items that I didn't end up liking or really needing.  

3. I wore more maternity clothes the first trimester and first half of the second trimester, which seems backwards to me.  But once I had a real "bump" I felt much more comfortable wearing some of my non-maternity dresses and tops, where at the beginning I loved the looser fitting, maternity clothes.  

4. I bought a few of the maternity jeans with the under the belly panel thinking that would be more comfortable.  I was WAY wrong and can't imagine choosing those over the full panel jeans.  The idea of wearing pants with a button ever again sounds foreign.  (which makes me nervous). 

5.  A lot of clothes I thought I could wear when I was pregnant aren't even close to possibilities.  There have been so many times I thought of a dress or a top that I thought would be so cute, only to put it on and have nothing to do but laugh at myself.  (Okay I wish I could say I laughed every time, but there definitely were times of crying getting dressed).  Not only has my belly drastically grown, but my growing chest has made many clothes far from an option! 

6.  There have been many days or even a week at a time that I've been happy with and loved my pregnant belly and then days or a week that I feel the exact opposite.  But this happens not pregnant so I shouldn't be surprised!

7.  My most successful places to find cheap, comfortable, and cute maternity clothing has been old navy and shade maternity.  I've found many tops and dresses for under $5 online at both places. 

8.  I keep reminding myself that I am only pregnant for a short time and should do my best to enjoy all these changes as it will be over soon!