Maternity Clothes

Today marks another significant event in the lives of Jude and me.

I finally banished all the maternity clothes to the basement (ok, except for a few camisole tops--but come on, those things are practical).

What makes this significant? Well, I have my old body back (actually, let's just call it a work in progress) and--the best part-- a living breathing reason for why I needed the clothes in the first place.

Over the years, I have made shopping into an art. I have a talent for scoring top brands at ridiculously low prices. My greatest achievements to date include some Tory Burch fashions from Nieman Marcus for under $100 and a pair of Seven jeans from Maison Weiss for the low, low price of $20. The secret? I don't really know, dumb luck maybe?

As anyone can imagine, my closet has become so jam packed over the years that Jeffrey's clothes have moved to an antique armoir. After lugging my bins of winter clothes to the basement, I had finally decided "Enough!" because 1. my basement is dark and scary and b. searching for my outfit of choice each day had finally become way too cumbersome. I had finally reached a point where I would just wear and enjoy the clothes I already had.

Then I got pregnant.

I had the pleasure of wearing winter, spring, and summer maternity fashions. In the coldness of February, my regular clothes finally gave and I just kept blowing up on into the heat of June. I didn't exactly score any real deals on maternity clothes. Turns out, maternity companies are going to milk you for as much as they can (except if you want to buy moo-moos; those are pretty cheap, and yes, I have one or two). However, the maternity store A Pea in the Pod did award me a $100 gift certificate to restaurant.com that I redeemed at four different restaurants because I guess they figured preggos gotta get fatter and then they could swoop in once again and save the day by selling me more clothes with elastic that gives even more slack.

As far as I can recall, my pregnancy is the only time in my life where I really enjoyed getting fat. The clothes were actually cute and looked fairly decent on me. I have to admit I liked those sizeable coverings that simultaneously clothed me and my child.

The image above is me after an evening of celebrating mine and Jeffrey's seventh wedding anniversary--one week before Jude arrived. At that point, I had a lot of baby and a lot of good food from Char in that belly.

Now all of those clothes are put away in the deep dark corner of that scary basement. As I put them away, I had Jude within my sights to serve as my reminder of how grateful I am that he's finally here. And because of that, I couldn't get sad over saying good-bye to those clothes.

After all, those clothes still live in my house. Maybe one day I'll unearth them from the dark depths of my basement to wear again!