Pregnant Barbie
I’m labeling this a Feel Good Friday post because it makes me feel good to say that my dear friend Christine, proud member of my wedding’s Butt Bow Brigade, is having a baby in May. And she’s apparently begun the oh-so-fun (or so I hear) process of finding maternity clothes. I assured her that my readers would no doubt know something about this issue. Christine observes:
Did you know that size 14 or higher women who are taller than 5′ 6″ and have more than a C cup don’t get pregnant? Yeah, it’s a fact that I have discovered while trying on the maternity clothes. Now if by some miracle one of those aformentioned women DOES get pregnant then apparently, money will rain from the sky. Because that’s got to be the only way that they can afford to pay $75 for a pair of pants and $35 for a t-shirt.
The issue for her is that she’s very (6’2″) tall. I’m betting that some of you are tall and have been pregnant, or know tall, pregnant people, and can help. But I also figure it would be great to have a catch-all post for all current and future pregnant BFD readers. So if you have resources for inexpensive maternity clothes, especially in sizes 14 and larger, this would be a great place to post ’em!
Oh, and if we succeed in finding her a maternity wardrobe, Christine promises to name Big Fat Deal as the collective godmother to her unborn child!
(Okay, I made that up.)
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Fashion, Feel Good Friday, Kids, Question, Tidbit
Actually, women of ANY height or boob size over a size 14 don’t have sex, so why on earth would we get pregnant. I’ve got #3 in the oven right now, and I’ve given up entirely. I just buy larger plus sizes and try to find things with an empire waist. I would imagine it’d be a LOT harder to find things if I were really tall, though. I’m a runt at 5’3”.
However, she can try JCPenney online (I got some cute things there when I was pg with #2. I worked at a bank, so they had some business-appropriate stuff.), Lane Bryant online has a maternity section, but of course, it’s all pretty pricey. Old Navy online has a plus size maternity selection, but I haven’t gotten anything from there, so I don’t know how true to size it is. Of course, there’s Motherhood, but they tend to run a little expensive, too.
Hope she finds something! Hey, if she finds anything on the cheap side, can you post it? My wardrobe budget is so small as to be nonexistant, but I can always use some more maternity tops.
http://www.oldnavy.com/browse/product.do?cid=26252&pid=523856
I have this top and I was just able to hide a balance ball under it and it still looked kind of cute. And it will properly show of the boobies!
Also a runt here as well at 5′ 3 1/2″ (yes, that 1/2″ is so important!). I had real trouble finding tops that fit my already large, becoming huge chest. Old Navy was the only shirt I could find that fit my breasts and my stomach. And I mainly wore pants that sat under my tummy because anything over got tight really fast. Although those fit me well in length so probably useless for a tall person (I got most pants at Target).
Stretchy pants and skirts that can later ride below a large pregnant belly would be a good buy. And there’s Woman Within – haven’t shopped there but a friend has. Their prices are reasonable.
Lands End did maternity up to 18 or 20 when I was last pregnant – and like their regular pants, they *hem to fit*. UP to 34″.
IF you’re tall, Penneys will be annoying unless youre pregnant in the Spring/summer. At least when I was shopping, all the pants had a 28″ inseam, and they only offered talls up to size 12.
(Why is that by the way? Wouldn’t it make sense that the taller you are the more likely you are to wear above a 12/14? But no – its a common thing – you can get talls up to size 12 or 14, and the 16-20s all have little short legs.)
I lived in two pairs of Lands End maternity pants. They were comfy, well made, and covered my ankles. I dont’ know if they still make them though???
I second the JCPenney rec.
JcPenney is where I got a lot of maternity stuff when I was pregnant back in 1999 (in the 20th Century, lol). I still have a skirt I got back then that I wear sometimes, so the quality is pretty good!
Looking at their site now, I see things in XXL in the Maternity Tall and 3X in the Maternity Plus sections, and their prices seem in line with the non-maternity stuff.
OMG, there is a ton of cute stuff now that I look deeper. And there’s a sale going on.
I think I need to go shopping.
Lane Bryant has a whole Maternity line now. I know there’s several things on clearance at the website right now.
Well, I’ve never been preggers (God willing, never will be XP) but I’ve always noticed that Fashion Bug seems to have a lot of pretty cute maternity wear, and their prices are typically affordable. I don’t know about the sizing, though.
I’m surprised she can’t find anything long enough – all the pants I tried on ended somewhere around three feet from my ankles when I was pregnant: I come in at a whopping 5’1″.
All I can suggest is Lane Bryant, which didn’t have maternity when I was pg. I ended up just buying bigger plus sizes, especially because a G-cup bust apparently doesn’t exist in the world of pregnancy, and there is no need to make a blouse that might actually fit such a thing.
I always talked about starting a chain of stores – Chicks With Tits – that would cater to women who were larger in any sense, and would do any event you needed. Chicks With Tits With Babies would, of course, do maternity. And we’d make sure the pants had some damn pockets.
Thank you ladies for the suggestions! It looks like I’ll be doing a lot of shopping at JCPenneys. I wonder if they have tall sizes in the store or if it’s purely a catalog/online thing.
Ebay!! Really, that’s the best, cheapest source of maternity clothing I’ve found so far, although I’m dying for cold weather clothing. Anybody have an idea where to find maternity jackets and coats?
Lands End no longer has a maternity line. Which was very annoying when everyone kept telling me to shop there.
I wish her luck but have no advice. I’m only 5’6 and I was a size 8 when I got pregnant, but my C cup boobs were apparently too shockingly huge for the maternity industry to contemplate, because I could not find shirts to fit for love nor money. Maternity clothes suck, they are ridiculously expensive, and they fall apart faster than any other clothes I’ve ever owned. The only things I liked were from the Gap, but their sizing is incredibly limited — I wore a lot of things that were too tight in the chest just because they were better than any of the alternatives.
Tell her to stay away from Target. The Liz Lange line is some of the most ridiculously size-limited stuff available. I am two months postpartum, have lost all but five pounds of the baby weight, and I can finally fit into my Liz Lange maternity shirts! Except they are still too tight in the boobs.
Back when my sister-in-law was pregnant with my nephew, I ended up making most of her maternity clothes. She’s 5 feet tall and wore a size 6 at the time. Pants were too long, tops were too long. Her best friend was also pregnant and wore a size 6, but she was 6 feet tall., her pants were too short and tops were way too short. So I altered my s-i-l’s patterns for her friend and made a ton of maternity clothes for both of them. I think that if women are shorter than average, taller than average, or fatter than average, they have a hard time finding maternity clothes that fit without alterations. Seems like if you don’t fit in a certain range, you aren’t supposed to get any, therefore you won’t get pregnant, and don’t need those kinds of clothing. Narrow-minded, to say the least.
I know we’re mad at Old Navy, but they came through for me during my pregnancy.
But actually, for my first pregnancy (when I didn’t have another kid to worry about), I just threw up my hands, went to the fabric store, and made my own stuff for everyday hanging out. I pounded out 3 jumpers, four pairs of pants, and four shirts (all out of very cool fabriic, mind you) in about a week. Since it was for me, I didn’t worry about details on the inside (like pinking my seams) that nobody would see.
I bit the bullet and went to the maternity section of Boston Store (Carson Pirie Scott/Bergenr’s/Saks) for “career”clothes, though. I work in a law firm; I had to do this. However, most stuffy places understand about the stupidity of buying nice clothes for this for only 6 months, so you can get away with 3 outfits that you just rotate and rotate and rotate.
Darn, had this been two years ago, I would have just gladly sent my stuff to you. I already donated it. (after baby #2 I had my tubes tied, so I knew I would NEVER need it again.)
It’s been 12 years since I last shopped for maternity clothes, but unless things have changed dramatically, your friend’s best bet is the fabric store. I’m five feet nine and a half inches tall, and a size 14- standard hourglass, just jumbo sized. There simply was nothing out there- the pants were all for wide midgets, the shirts doubled as pygmy dresses and they all had huge collars- as if pregnancy doesn’t enlarge the bustline enough, here, have two layers of floppy fabric!
Thank GOD for sewing machines, and good patterns.
I’ve never been pregnant (and agree w/Wish – hope never to be!) but the whole thing about tiny-busted pregnancy wear seems particularly weird to me. Aren’t all women’s boobs supposed to get BIGGER during pregnancy? And don’t we live in a boob fetishist’s culture? Is this some weird kind of madonna/whore thing?
Greetings! Francesca wrote a post about plus-size fashions for the pregnant ladies! Here is the link!
http://manolobig.com/2007/08/27/plus-size-maternity-the-agony-and-only-a-leetle-beet-of-ecstasy/
xoxo
It is evidently true that those of us over a size 12/14 don’t have sex and so are in no danger of becoming pregnant…if we are to believe the racks of maternity clothes.
When I was pregnant with Jack, not only was I way over size 14, I was also short — and OLD! (Nearly 50) I don’t wear jeans and t-shirts, and I couldn’t bring myself to wear those maternity cloths that implied that somehow I was a three-year old again…
I gave up and bought my usual work clothes in two sizes larger at Fashion bug. I looked like me and was happy.
I can’t help with the large-size, thing, but for a tall pregnancy, belly bands (or bandeaus in the posh maternity shop) are your savior. They are big tubes of cotton lycra that bridge the gap between too-short top and bottom. They give nice support, don’t bind, and look like a cute layered shirt.
I work at Lane Bryant, and women come in all thing looking for stuff to wear when they are pregnant. They all complain about the maternity clothes being too small. I really think someone should start a maternity plus line. Lane Bryant has some stuff, but not enough…
I’m kind of on the taller end of average -5’8″, maybe 5’9″. I wear a size 20. I found a small handful of maternity pants that worked and just wore them all the time, washing very frequently. I had a pair of pants that I got from ebay that were from the Gap. They were REALLY long. I mean, they were dragging the floor for me, and I usually wear a size long with no real issues. And all of my “regular” sized maternity pants, from other stores, were too short once they had been washed once. Unfortunately the Gap doesn’t offer much in maternity wear in the store – OF COURSE. But they have a pretty decent selection online last time I checked, and they do have sales. And there’s always ebay.
Hi! while researching for for beautiful plus size clothing for an illustration project I’m working on I stumbled over this shop: http://www.amplemama.ca/ It’s Canadian but they also ship to the US it seems. Hope this helps!
I don’t know if this has been mentioned, but I just saw a news article about an online used maternity clothes store called elegantmommy.com.
Check out my website, http://www.plus-size-pregnancy.org. It’s not a commercial website and I don’t sell anything. Rather it has a bunch of information and resources for pregnant women of size.
The very first thing I created for my site was a list of companies that carry maternity and nursing wear in plus sizes. I went my whole first pregnancy without ANY maternity clothes and once I found some (AFTER the pregnancy was over, alas), I wanted everyone to know how to find them.
Plus-sized and tall is a difficult conundrum. Not a lot of choices out there…but there are a few. I do discuss those choices on my site.
Look for the clothing FAQs on my site. Also has where to find nursing bras in larger sizes (band or cup or both) and other maternity-related items, like baby carriers and slings for women of size.
And there’s lots of information about being pregnant at larger sizes, to counter the misinformation and scare tactics that are out there on the ‘net. Happy gestating!
I’m just looking for some cute tee’s or something for the new to be parents. They’re more like Harley D people. Can somebody help? Christmas is coming fast!!!