Buy 'em, rent 'em, wear 'em

I've finally given in. I'm wearing a real maternity top for the first time. It's from Belly Button (how cute is that!). On Monday, after an extremely long, exhausting and back breaking (literally) day, I decided to explore seriously the option of maternity clothes. My skirts and pants are at the point of bursting, becoming extremely uncomfortable the minute I try to eat something.

The problem was that most maternity wear was still from the season of yore's line of shapeless, tent like, peter-pan collared gingham collection and being caught dead in them wasn't an option. A colleague of mine told me in no uncertain terms that it was better to be pregnant, beautiful but poor rather than pregnant, ugly and rich. So, there, my marching orders.

Anyway, I found the perfect solution because pretty maternity wear is extremely difficult to find and expensive in our sunny island with a dearth of babies (ah, mayhaps, I have chanced upon the reason...- I did blog once, a long time ago about not wanting to fall pregnant till I figured out what I was going to wear). And the solution is, don't buy the clothes that can cost up to $150 per piece, rent them.

A friend of mine from college days owns this ingenuous concept of renting out maternity clothes in Singapore. Her store is filled with un-pregnant looking clothes. She personally flies to NY and Japan to actually stock her store so one would be hard pressed to find something tent like in her store. I had a marvellous time, spending two hours in the changing room feeling like a celebrity while they brought me piece after piece. Most of what I discarded for the time being was discared because there was still too much room in the top for it to fall nicely. She also did a marvellous job in categorising the clothes that fit into i) fits now and the next month or two pile ii) should fit till the last month pile iii) should fit till I pop and thereafter to be used to concealed flabby tummy pile. And I was to rent the stuff from Pile (i) and decide if I wanted to purchase stuff from Piles (ii) and (iii).

At the end of it, I had about 7 new pieces of clothes, 3 of which were rented and I should wear to death for the next month before I outgrow them and also have to return them to get dry cleaned. The rest are staples that should last me for a long while. Now I don't have to worry so much about the buttoning of my pants because I have pants that have stretchy pants. And for those that cannot be buttoned, I wait with great anticipation for the arrival of the Belly band that I've ordered that's supposed to extend the lifespan of my favourite but cannot button pants!
And it constantly amazes me that the bump grows larger each day and is becoming quite hard to ignore. You look down and it's there. Weird sensation for someone who's never really had much of a tummy.

Technorati Tags: Pregnancy, Maternity Exchange Singapore, Maternity clothes