19 Weeks!

Baby McPhee hit the 19 week mark on Saturday, and celebrated by making mama look (and feel) bigger than ever!  I made it through 17 weeks wearing "normal" pants (one size up from what I wore pre-pregnancy), but when 18 weeks came, I knew it was time to break out the maternity-wear in full force.  There was just one slight problem: I'm too tall for normal maternity pants. I don't know why there aren't more tall maternity pants -- do retailers think only short women get pregnant? -- but the only ones I could find would cost $69.50 at least.  GAP, I love you, but not that much. I made it through the week wearing a combination of dresses, a foldover waist skirt, some maternity capris (anything in a crisis, right? and they turned out kind of cute!) and a pair of pants forced uncomfortably beneath my growing bump.

Saturday came and so did my mom. We were on a mission to make maternity pants!  We sorted through my pre-pregnancy clothes looking for candidates.  We had a good laugh at how much I'd grown already when I attempted to pull on, let alone walk in my pre-P jeans. Apparently my hips aren't what they used to be. We found a few pairs that I could put on that weren't in danger of splitting in two or cutting off all circulation to my legs, and we were off.  I loosely followed this tutorial: http://modestmaven.blogspot.com/2009/11/converted-maternity-pants-tutorial.html (thank you, internet!!!) and we were off!  It was a bit scary cutting into a pair of dress slacks, especially when I couldn't so much as start the zipper (which she recommended you be able to do if you wanted the pants to fit at all!). The waistband came off and ahhh! I could breathe and zip the zipper halfway.  This was encouragement enough.  By the end of the weekend, I had TWO pairs of converted maternity pants and three more pairs ready to be dissected and refitted for under $30, thank you very much!  Isaac asked me at one point "uh, are we going to have to buy you all new pants after this pregnancy?" My response was "yes, probably". I did manage to save two favorite pairs from the scissors, and scored some amazing $10 jeans at the Goodwill that I could almost button over my burgeoning belly, so I'm actually feeling much better about transitioning out of maternity wear someday... although when that will be is anyone's guess -- these things are COMFY!

Anyway, I'll leave you with a couple of photos of the belly now that there's officially something to see, and a pair of my new old pants that cost me nothing but about an hour of time before church yesterday!!