Plus Size Maternity Clothes

This is an open commentary to you, oh makers and sellers of plus size maternity wear.

Please, for the love of God, start making maternity clothing for plus{ish} size women that don’t suck. 

I don’t want to wear a tent.  I don’t want to wear a mumu.  I don’t want to wear ugly shit with spangly crap, glitter, hideous ugly prints, OR obnoxiously bright colors.  There is no reason for a woman in her 7th or 8th or 9th month to wear a BRIGHT yellow shirt, she will look and feel like a school bus.  I want to wear what you sell to normal women, in a bigger size.

I also don’t want to resort to buying everything online because that frankly sucks.

I get that my problem lies in the fact that I wear an XL or XXL  in ‘normal’ clothes.  I wear a size 16/18/20 depending on the item.  Apparently, with a few exceptions that I will talk about in just a minute, if you are not a Small, Medium, or Large, you get the ugly stuff… if you get anything at all.  And for the record, some of my ‘normal’ friends bitch about your in store selections as well. 

I would also like to know why the makers of Spanx and Blanqi make shapewear for sizes Small, Medium, and Large and NOT for the women who might benefit from some shapewear?  Spanx makes it for regular plus size women, why not the pregnant version of us?  And to be fair, Spanx does go to an XL size, but this pregnant belly was not getting into it.  Blanqi doesn’t make anything for you if you’re bigger than a twelve, I’m not even kidding.  The fact that they offer an X-Small size and not an X-Large size pisses me off so much that I am not even compelled to link to them.  What size 2 girl needs a body shaper?

What started this rant?  Today I went to Destination Maternity.  An entire store filled with maternity clothes.  Do you know that the XL in the store is very tiny {akin to someone who wears a large in normal clothes and might need to size up for a baby bump} and that their selection of plus size clothes was probably pretty near to 5% of the store’s inventory.  Not a dress in sight.  Two swimsuits.  Truly hideous clothes in comparison to their regular items.  Abysmal selection.  I will, in fact, give them props though for being the only place that I have found plus size {meaning actual plus 1x, 2x, 3x, etc…} maternity nylons in the entire city and the fact that they also carry underwear for the big girls as well.

Not to be left out, I also went to JC Penney whose XL size would have actually fit me except for the fact that there was only one wall of maternity clothes and 60% of that was t-shirts.  ONE wall and two uprights, in an entire JC Penney shoved in a corner randomly with the plus size clothes, for a maternity section… still not a ‘plus size’ maternity section mind you.

I guess that’s better than Dillard’s who doesn’t have a maternity section at all.

Target {smartly} carries sizes to XXL which is great for me for later in the pregnancy.  Fabulous!  My only gripe with you Target is WHAT happened to your maternity section?  When I was pregnant with Finn I could run to Target and find tons of cute clothes and now, I’m lucky to find anything at all in the six racks of clothes that are at my Target store, though their selection online is pretty good.  I did find a great tankini and their basic t’s can not be beat… plus {and this is a big bonus} I didn’t have to pay a crazy amount to bring them home.  Thank you Liz Lange.  I also love that they carry BeBand in XL at my local store.

Old Navy is by far my favorite for maternity clothes.  My local store carries maternity also, but it has gone the way of Target in terms of selection… what once was an entire section is now, sadly, a few uprights stuck in the middle of an aisle.  In store you can only buy up to XL, which is fine for now, stinks for later.  I am pleasantly surprised that I could buy jeans {size 18} in store, the full panel denim leggings {look and feel like jeans, not jeggings} have been the BEST maternity item I have purchased by far.  They hug my bump tightly, don’t have to be pulled up every 10 seconds, and are so comfortable.  My second favorite maternity item?  The jersey stretch tank, layers just right, comes in tons of colors, and looks seamless.  All of their ‘regular’ size maternity clothes go to size 18 and XXL which means that I can order ANYTHING I want from their maternity selection.  Choices!  I have choices!  But again, I have to order that stuff online which means I’m screwed for that birthday dinner tomorrow night.

We will see if I fare any better at Kohls or Macy’s, but I am not holding my breath.