Makers of Clothing, I Bite My Thumb at Thee!

Anyone who has been pregnant knows that a rapidly-changing body is difficult to clothe. At first, you may want to keep things under wraps, so you can't pull out the maternity clothes even if you start showing 3 weeks before conception. (Yeah, figure that out.) Then, when you want to let everyone know the happy news, things don't get any easier.

First of all, about three years ago women's fashion embraced high waistlines, right under the bust. This made anyone who wasn't pregnant and wasn't skinny look like they were expecting a new bundle of love. It also made it virtually impossible for anyone to safely assume that you were pregnant. So you had to get really obvious, like, patting your belly or supporting your back so people would know you weren't just fat. At first the pregnant ladies rejoiced that they finally had a larger selection of clothes from which to buy, but then they realized that while the shirts LOOKED like maternity, they just weren't made to handle the baby-mobile. Like this shirt.Cute, yes, but the neckline was so low I couldn't even try it on for a "before" picture. Like I said, it wasn't made to handle the extraordinary expanding assets of a mom-to-be. So I found a black shirt I didn't care about anymore [read: it didn't fit anymore] and did a little sewing.

See? Everything nicely contained.

Surprisingly, this shirt doesn't have the problem common to most shirts--even maternity--namely, not being long enough.

Hooray! A new maternity shirt.

Now, even though they commit the gross sin of looking like maternity clothes, we can hardly blame regular shirts for failing to live up to something they weren't made for. However, I have a BIG beef with maternity clothing makers. My complaints are as follows.

• Ridiculously expensive--Helloooooo, I'm only going to be wearing these for about 6 months, do you really need to charge $30 for a shirt and $50 for a pair of pants that won't stay up anyway? (Motherhood Maternity)
• Poor selection--Most stores have stopped carrying a maternity line (Walmart!) and those that do have less choice than a high school cafeteria. Recently at JC Penney's I found their maternity "section" tucked in a corner of the intimate apparel. There were 6 different shirts and 4 kinds of jeans. wow. I'll have a hamburger, please.
• Low necklines--You would think that the shirts made specifically for bust-increasing women would be made to hold it all in, but such is not the case. Perhaps they think that women who have always had little to show off now look forward to displaying as much as possible. Probably a lot of women feel that way, but I'm surprised someone hasn't come forward to market to the high concentration of child-bearing modest-minded women in Idaho and Utah.
• Not long enough--Come on! This belly is just going to get bigger. Your shirts should be long enough to cover it, by themselves, no $20 belly bands or hot undershirts.
• Layers--Layers are touted as the perfect solution for pregnant women. I see them as a perfect scam. "Hey Jerry, what if we could get each pregnant women to have to wear two shirts each day instead of one?" "That's brilliant, Larry! We'll make twice as much! And let's make the jeans all low-rise so we can sell those belly bands too!" Yes, layers are just more clothes you wouldn't need if the shirts were long enough or normal-necked enough in the first place. And they make you too hot. Even in the winter, fat people are going to get hot when they have too many layers on! I am so frustrated when my clothing is not good enough to be worn on its own.

So last Fall I found two fugly dresses on clearance at Walmart for $3 each.

Yeah, freakin' ugly. There was a blue one and a purple one, and they just HUNG on me like I was this gross house-bound mu-mu lady. But then I had an idea. So I bought them. And a few weeks ago, I transformed them.
I cut off most of the length and used some of it to make a panel for the neckline. I hemmed the shirts long so that they'd cover everything now and later. I am so excited about my three new maternity shirts! (None of which started out as maternity, so THERE, you blasted Jerry and Larry!)