Leah Love

Maternity Clothing Cheap

How-to for ParentingComments Off on Maternity Clothing Cheap

Maternity clothes are expensive.  Some of us (me) just don’t have the budget for a $60 shirt, let alone an entire wardrobe of maternity wear that will be worn for maybe six months.  And you know they just never go on sale do they, hmm?  Here are some of the maternity clothing cheats I used.

Maternity clothing cheap

When it comes to undergarments I made do with my normal panties; my favorites had the comfort bands that I rolled down under my stomach as it grew.  They didn’t fall down once.

I also didn’t buy maternity bras either; I found that I wasn’t busting out of my 18-hour brassieres and, in fact, a little constriction (not a lot!) helped me avoid some breastfeeding related pains.  Though do stay away from underwire as it can hinder milk production.

You can get extra mileage out of your regular pants by simply unbuttoning the fly and covering the gap with a strategically placed top.  If you are worried about the pants sliding down, I jerry-rigged a couple extra inches by using a hair/rubber band.  I did this until I chanced to find a belly band from Medela ($$$ brand) at a garage sale for pennies!


Yoga pants!  They beat the ‘traditional’ pair of maternity pants by a mile!  With those you must choose either a high or low waist and I’m not comfy with having the waist so high over my stomach so I got the low waistband and then they refuse to stay up!  Aggravating!   Yoga pants have a waist band that you can fold up over your stomach or down over your hips (they stay up!) whatever suits you.  You don’t have to have one or the other anymore, Yayy!  Super comfy and they’ll even go on sale from time to time.  If you’re not a Yoganista I recommend that this be the item you pick up for your pregnancy.

Around the fourth month I began to see that my regular shirts weren’t quite cutting it any longer but the ruched maternity shirt I had was clearly too far along for me.  Enter the long tank top!  If you don’t have one in your (or hubby’s) drawer you can find them cheap in menswear.  The long tank will happily house your belly bump through the second (maybe part of all of the third!) trimester and it’s perfect for layering.  Search your closet (maybe your girlfriends’ too!) for other ‘waist-less’ options that might also do for you, go for the baby doll shirt, the maxi dress, the empire waist, anything really.  As long as it stays off your stomach it will be perfect!


Footwear.  My feet expanded, it’s the truth.  Shoes that I bought before I was pregnant are not just a smidge too snug, this may never happen to you but I just wanted to share.  Refrain from buying shoes the next size up, don’t do it until you need it!  Meantime it’s easiest (weather depending) to enjoy the open air of flip flops or the roominess of snow boots.

You can also find some pretty good ‘traditional’ maternity wear through secondhand places like Goodwill.  If you’re or someone you know is a savvy thrifter you could soon be rolling in the cute pregnancy wear.  And don’t be afraid to take over your husband’s wardrobe as your own, what’s he going to do, say no?  Bwaahaaa!

Annoying Pregnant Women

Pregnancy, , 1 Comment

Annoying Pregnant Women CartoonI attempt very hard not to let my pregnancy, and all its symptoms put other people out.  I have often heard myself using the phrase “I’m pregnant, not feeble” and have only ever once asked for somebody’s seat, and that was because sometimes I have a bit of trouble breathing comfortably while standing.

But I happen to believe that pregnancy does not entitle a woman to any special treatment.  Here are a few stories of women who apparently don’t subscribe to my line.

The Entitled Pregnant

This is the woman you’ve probably met and definitely resented.  The woman who automatically cuts to the front of the line, even though you and your fellow liners have been waiting patiently for your turns,  without casting one apologetic ‘may I please?’ look over her shoulder to the rest of us.

And why should she ask for permission?  Isn’t the fact that she has a belly an all access pass?  Isn’t the word ‘pregnant’ synonymous with the word ‘entitled?’

The Sickening Sap Pregnant

The pregnant woman who gets teary-eyed whenever she thinks about or mentions her ‘pwecious widdwle baby bean.’  Nothing in the world has ever been this important, this momentous before and nothing (nothing) ever will be this important again.

She speaks only in baby talk even when out with the girls so her baby won’t feel left out.

Later she will send out mass mailings of the DVD with her birth on it, and calls you later to compare notes.

The Over Protective Pregnant

I was listening to a radio story a long time ago, so long that I cannot give proper credit to whom it belongs, where a pregnant woman (she described herself as just beginning to show) was shopping, pushing a grocery cart.  When she chanced to come around a corner at the same somebody else and their cart was coming around that corner.

This woman flings her cart away ahead of her, huddles on her ankles with her arms over her belly and screams.  One presumes she couldn’t think of a better way to handle the situation?  Like, remembering that you’re a pregnant woman, not an active bomb.

The Annoying Pregnant

The woman who gets pregnant and then willfully refuses to talk about anything else.  She has even been known to break into your conversations (say, on the virtues of Lynyrd Skynyrd.) and switch the tracks with something like ‘my baby’s almost a free bird!’

This behavior elicits nothing but a collective eye roll, with some heavy sighing.  But do you think she’ll take the hint?

NooOOOoooo.

That will just remind her that she hasn’t told you that her mother-in-law is hardcore hinting middle names and isn’t that horrendous behavior?

The Pageant Production Pregnant

This woman likes to stage things.  She hires a professional photographer to take her pregnancy photos complete with the one where she and her husband’s hands make an oh-so-adorable heart shape over her stomach.

She hires a baker to insert gender-specific buttercream filling into oversized (overpriced) cupcakes and invites everyone over to watch her eat them.  Oh!  It’s a boy!  I could’ve just called you, but I wanted everyone to take a couple hours out of their day to drive over here and consume empty calories before driving back from whence you came until I beckon again.

Then she’ll have a belly bust done, casting her stomach in paper mache and painting/beading/bronzing it so you can then eat gender-specific nachos out of it at the baby shower, which, by the way, she has not allowed her ‘host’ to plan for her.  Why?  When she could just do it herself and get it right.  Right?

The Critical Pregnant

This is the mother to be whom, upon seeing you enjoying chocolate-covered peanuts at the movies, rolls her eyes and scoffs loud enough for you to notice her disdain.  “I would never eat that, my baby deserves to have proper nutrition.  Doesn’t your baby deserve better?”

Wherein, if I had the nerve to think of something like this off the cuff, I’d say, ‘You deserve to know the truth, nobody cares what you have to say, #@tch.’

Here is a song by Garfunkel & Oates called “Pregnant Women are Smug”  If you’re offended and can’t laugh at yourself a little… then it probably hits too close to home.  Hmmm?

Pregnancy and Diarrhea

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Diarrhea is looseness, or wateriness, of stool, usually combined with an increase in the frequency of bowel movements.

Diarrhea can be caused by food poisoning, a parasitical intestine, or a virus.

Pregnant women can get Diarrhea by our desire to make sure our baby gets the best while he/she is on the inside. We drink more water; we pop vitamins; we eat less fat and more veggies.

Diarrhea can even be brought on by any little increase in our exercise regimen!  Don’t flip out if you’re pregnant and have diarrhea. It is probably that your system isn’t used to your new anti-cheese puff pro-zucchini diet.

Stay away from:

  • Prunes!
  • Milk
  • Fatty and fried foods
  • Spicy foods
  • Sugary drinks like grape juice and soda
  • Diarrhea meds that list sodium or sodium bicarbonate in the ingredients (It’s not safe for your pregnancy!)

Eat these:

  • Rice
  • Probiotic yogurt
  • potatoes
  • Apples (applesauce)
  • crackers
  • Bread toasted or not
  • Bananas

Absolute diarrhea is five or more bowel movements a day.

Relative diarrhea is an increase in the number of bowel movements per day or an increase in the looseness of stools compared to a person’s ‘normal’ stools.

While mild cases aren’t anything to get anxious over, do make an appointment to see your doctor for these reasons:

  • Poops that are completely liquid
  • Mucusy movements
  • Bloody movements
  • Diarrhea for two days or more

After the Shower

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Logo of a ShowerBaby showers can be fun!  Play a game, fawn over a onesie, mow down on cake!  But afterwards?  I find myself scrambling around to re-evaluate my baby’s needs.  I don’t know what to do; I no longer know what it is that I need.

Clothing?  Sooo many cute onesies.  So, sooo many of them.  And how many of them can I even use?  My mother was over from Michigan to teach me a thing or two about it, here’s a few things I learned.

Separate clothing into two categories.

  1. By size on the tag
  2.  Separate by layers.

I didn’t know this, and yes it makes me feel a bit stupid, but a onesie is less like ‘clothing’ per-se and more like long underwear.  Meaning, I’ll hardly ever see the cutsie-utsie little things because they’ll be covered (or should be, it’s going to be winter after all) by a warm outfit.

So, not only do I have to make sure I have enough onesies in my baby’s appropriate size (whatever that may be when he comes out, yes it’s a HE!), but I have to make sure there are enough warm outer layer outfits to cover him while it’s cold out.  That about doubles my clothing needs.

That brings me to a cold sweat because no matter how much research I do, how much I think I know what’s going on, I really, really, don’t.  What else am I missing?

Not that I was relying heavily on the baby shower to provide me with everything I need, but it’s put me back at Zero!

Like my one dear friend, about to have a baby herself, kindly went out and found me some secondhand cloth diapers.  That was about the most thoughtful gift I received that day since no one seems to believe that I could be committed to cloth diapering, but it still managed to throw me off.  Because they were not the cloth diapers I intended to diaper my child with.  They’re all in ones from Bummis and I am just a little concerned that, though they’ll be great for when my child is a little older and bigger, they won’t be able to fit my newborn.  And I still see myself folding prefolds, and I love those little Thirsties diapers, so unbelievably useful!

And now I also have to sort out those items that we will never ever use, like one of those seemingly useful tarp-like things that you spread out under the highchair to catch the fallout from feeding time.  While I appreciate the thought, I still can’t understand why they’re useful since no matter what you still have to clean it up to reuse it.

It seems like more work than just bending over and wiping up the floor since you have to wipe up a tarpaulin and then dry it, fold it, store it somewhere.

I feel like a bad gift receiver, but maybe that’s just me knowing that I should probably never commit the truth to paper lest the givers read it and learn to think that I’m ungrateful.  Though if we’re being honest, who here hasn’t returned the holiday sweater Auntie Annie gave us for Christmas?

We all do what we can to avoid having to find a room to store said sweater; barring the off chance that dear Auntie Annie will come over and want to see it.

Which is the reason I never, ever, stray from the registry.  But in my experience, every event where you use a registry (weddings, etc) nobody ever sticks to it.  Not complaining. I’m grateful that people think of us at all really, but I’ve never been able to figure it out.

I hate registries.
They are so misleading!

As grateful as we are to be the recipients of so much thoughtfulness, so many people will take their direction and change yours in the process.  After the shower, my plans are all washed away.

About Pica

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I don’t have Pica, but I thought I would try and teach myself a little something about it.  Just in case it rears its scary head somewhere in the future.

I probably shouldn’t go ahead and assume that everybody knows what Pica is.  So I’ll describe it here and if you know it already you can just skip ahead a little.

Pica is when you have a physical craving for items or substances that have little or no nutritional value.  It is the persistent eating of non-nutritive things for at least a month without any association with an aversion to food.  The word ‘Pica’ itself is from the Latin word for ‘Magpie’ which is a bird who is apparently known for its questionable eating habits.

Usually, it’s associated with Pregnant women, at least in my experience. Though I know a woman at work who has a young cousin who will literally eat anything it is left alone with, even nails and batteries!  That and other rather ‘unsavory’ ingredients.  Let me go ahead and name some of the most common types of pica.

Geophagia

If you recognized ‘geo’ you got it, eating dirt.  Topsoil, clay, chalk, etc…  Animals do it in the wild, and it’s fine, but apparently we can’t chew on the grass with our pups, people frown on that.

A pregnant woman who eats clay may be throwing back to the days of the cave when clay was the best available remedy for nausea.  Clay, in rural US areas, is eaten as some sort of soother for the gastrointestinal tract and may absorb toxins.  Why are we eating the toxins?

My best friend growing up used to eat sand right off the ground.  I don’t know how she figured out that sand was the thing to eat, at the time I just thought it was one wacky quirk.  Like being able to hock a loogie or something (ew).  Not as a geophagic deficiency in minerals.

Pagophagia. Ice

I’ve never met anyone who had to compulsively eat ice before, but I suppose it’s easy to disguise.  I mean, who is going to look at you askance if you chew on the remnants of your soft drink?  It’s even easier to hide if you like Icees.

If you have this compulsion try popping some iron pills, the two are linked.  Though apparently it’s unclear if that’s the truth or pagophagia may cause iron deficiencies, check with your doctor!  But don’t chew too much ice it’s probably not good for your teeth huh?

Amylophagia.  Starch.

What?  There are people out there who eat boxes of purified cornstarch?  News to me.  Though pregnant women should file this one away since amylophagia has similar characteristics to gestational diabetes and can gum up a diagnosis.  Just like g.d. excess consumption of starch leads to high birth weights and delivery complications.

…..

List of pica cravings:  burnt matches, hair, stones, charcoal, baby powder, mothballs, toilet paper, couch cushions, toothpaste, soap, sand, plaster, coffee grounds, coin money, baking soda, cigarette ash, dry bath sponges, kitty litter, wire etc…

Go to ranker.com/list/the-10-most-bizarre-eating-disorder-news-stories/ivana-wynn to see some evidence of pica sufferers.

Go here experienceproject.com/group_stories.php?g=99194 to visit a message board where pica sufferers discuss what they eat and why.

It is suggested (though how can we know) that half of pregnant women who suffer from pica don’t say anything about it.  I just told my husband that I would probably have a hard time telling him if I were inclined to eat let’s say chalk.  Mostly because I already have food shame, but that’s another story.

Can you imagine the fear in confessing to someone, even your doctor, that you like to eat kitty litter?

You don’t have to tell anyone if you don’t want to, except of course your doctor.  You can’t gain anything by keeping back from him/her.  Their job is to ‘do no harm’, nowhere in the job description does it say anything about being judgmental and if you have that kind of doctor…  kick him/her to the curb and start over with someone more helpful!

Surrogate Pregnancy

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A traditional surrogate was a woman whose own egg is artificially inseminated by a man’s sperm.  She carries and births the baby, giving it to the parents to keep and raise.

Most of today’s surrogate babies (about 750 a year) are the product of gestational surrogacy.  Where the embryo from the biological parents is artificially implanted in a surrogate uterus; where it is carried and delivered to be raised by the parents.  In a case of gestational surrogacy, the surrogate has no biological relation to the baby.

 

There are many reasons why a couple would choose to use a surrogate as an option:

  • Uterine problems
  • Genetic disease
  • Infertility
  • age
  • Medical conditions that make pregnancy dangerous

Compensation paid to a surrogate averages $20,000 to $27,000.  Costs increase if an egg or sperm donor is needed.  This amount doesn’t cover the medical costs, such as in vitro fertilization treatments, the Northeast Assisted Fertility Group (NAFG) suggests prospective parents will need $100,000 to $120,000 for a child.  For many, the costs of surrogacy can be prohibitive.

One of the first known traditional surrogacies in America resulted in the surrogate (the baby’s biological mother) deciding that she wanted to keep the child and not give up her parental rights to the baby’s adoptive mother.  The parents sued for the child, and though the court had the birth contract nullified, the family court system gave custody of the baby to the biological father and his wife, giving the surrogate (biological) mother visitation rights.

There are legal and ethical questions to consider;

  • Who is a mother?  Can ‘mother’ even be defined by law?
  •  What if the ‘parents’ ask for the abortion of a fetus with disabilities and the surrogate refuses?  Who is going to force her to abort the child?
  • What if the traditional surrogate sues for visitation rights?
  • Could a traditional surrogate’s financial straits be forcing her to ‘sell’ her baby she would have otherwise kept as her own?

How to Stop Breastfeeding

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Breastfeeding Baby

Photo Credit: Ania i Artur Nowaccy via Compfight cc

It’s time to stop breastfeeding, but how?  Anyone who’s gone even a few hours without feeding/pumping knows, it’s painful!  It HURTS!  So, how much is it going to hurt to stop altogether?

The answer, for me, is a lot!  My breasts were engorged and were hard as rocks!  It became tough to feel comfortable enough to go to sleep at night.

How to stop breastfeeding:

I started by decreasing my pumpings by minutes.  I used to pump for up to half an hour.

Here are a few more tips.

  • Wear supportive undergarments.  I didn’t go braless through the entire process, not once.  But don’t over-constrict your breasts. And continue to avoid underwire.  Too much pressure on your chests can contribute to inflamed ducts and painful mastitis.
  • If your breasts can handle it, take a shower.  The warm water will relax you and cause your breasts to leak which will help relieve the pressure on your glands.  I’m not fond of it myself because the leaking continues (sometimes sprays!) for a while after the shower is shut off.
  • A heating pad placed on the sorest spot will sooth muscles and may cause a little release, wear nipple shields!
  • Don’t quit cold turkey.  I made the mistake of cutting off pumping altogether but quickly went back and pumped as soon as I realized how awful that was.  The pain makes it nearly impossible!  Start by cutting back one pump a week if you have the time.
  • Cabbage leaves.  Use them like nursing pads.  I haven’t tried them personally but the next pregnancy I’ll be giving them a try!

If all else fails, the occasional dose of pain killer can be acceptable; just ok it with you physician first.  I know it hurts, but it’ll be over before you know it and ‘whew!’ won’t you be relieved to have your breasts back to yourself!

How Does the Month You Were Born Affect You?

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Winter MonthI’ve discovered that some say the course of your career can be traced back to the month of your birth.  I, of course, don’t put much stock in this line of thinking, there are bound to be a few months where anything is the most likely to happen, for (completely made up) example… did you know that people born in March are given more wet willies than people born in April?  At most it’s an amusing diversion that I’m going to share with you.

I was born in early August.  According to research done last year, being born in August makes me much more likely to have it rough in school (which I suppose is true). August kids do poorly at school because we start school a whole year later than our September born friends.  We’re already at a disadvantage!

September babies are good at school, from what we gather from above, but apparently all those born in the autumn are longer lived and in better health than those born in the springtime.

October kids live longest.

November breeds serial killers.  By seventeen to nine.  Charles Milles Manson, Ted Bundy, Nannie Doss, David Parker Ray, and so on… Should I be concerned for my little bambino?

December babies, like ‘all’ winter babies, are more likely to suffer from bipolar disorder.  Less asthma, their mothers aren’t as highly educated, and a higher number become (of all things) dentists.

Teen mothers have quite a lot of babies in January, more than any other month.  As a winter baby, they are at a very slight risk of schizophrenia and food allergies.

Artists are born in February, also traffic cops.  Why these two are connected, I haven’t a clue!

March is another month for artists, musicians especially.  Just like the other spring babies they’re at greater risk for asthma.

People who were born between April and July live about 101 days under the national life expectancy.  Probably because April babies have trouble with eating disorders, become alcoholics or have Parkinson ’s disease.

May babies seem to be fine except for the misfortune of having been born in spring, which is supposed to mean they’ll have a higher likelihood of anorexia and suicide. Though their risk of most diseases is slightly lower than in other months.

You’re more likely to win a Nobel Peace Prize if you’re born in June, and it seems you climb the corporate ladder very nicely, but they’re in for higher risks of diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

July means you’re a summer kid, and summer kids are less dour than winter babies, but they’re going to have issues with their eyesight.

Does your birth month match your personality?

Let us know in the comment section below.