hope springs maternal
Penguins win! Flyers lose! Two great tastes that taste great together! :D :D :D :D :D
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You may have heard (or know from experience) that second pregnancies show a lot faster than firsts. This is definitely true in my case. I pulled out the maternity clothes last week, and I'm really glad I did, for several reasons:
1. With the morning sickness, any kind of pressure around the abdomen exacerbated it. That was actually the impetus to pulling out the box of maternity clothes; I was sitting on the couch with my pants unbuttoned, and I thought "This is stupid. I could be wearing pants with a stretchy panel right now and then I could feel comfortable without being all gross."
2. My maternity clothes are frankly way nicer than my regular clothes. This is because I have never really been a clothes shopper. I have very low rate of new input, and most of what I get rid of, I get rid of only with sadness after it is worn out. I am still wearing shirts bought in high school. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if as much as half of my t-shirts are from high school. In some cases shirts that are over ten years old!
So maternity was really a unique opportunity to buy a number of items as an adult with my adult tastes. I did get a few pieces second hand, but now with my recent maternity/nursing 2-in-1 wear splurge especially, most of what I have, I chose. And what I've gone for is much more tailored, more feminine, more mature, and more dressy than my normal outfit basics, which is mostly t-shirt + jeans.
3. Maternity tops are often extra long too and cut more generously in the chest, and that's always a relief to me. Much of what I like best in my maternity tops (like the turtleneck I'm wearing now), if I tried to buy similar cuts for a non-pregnant figure, most brands are assuming a woman four inches shorter than me. And proportionate to the rest of me my chest is somewhat bigger than typical (at least according to the waist/bust measurements in sizing charts), which exacerbates the problem because that means the shirt gets caught up there, or I have to buy a shirt which fits in the chest but hangs around me like a curtain.
Oh, that brings up another important point, which is that aside from a few second-hand gifts, my maternity clothing is tailored/figure-following with implied or outright empire waist. EMPIRE WAIST OR DIE. There are few things less attractive than the maternity shirt that hangs like a tarp. Especially when you're in the End Game. You just look like a bell.
The only thing I don't like about maternity clothing is that maternity pants have even fewer pockets than regular women's pants. I don't know why women's pants makers don't think we need pockets, but we do. Not a single pair of my maternity pants has pockets, not even the jeans. :(
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Pippa has started biting her nails. She started doing it when I started enforcing having her fall asleep not nursing. Rather than suck her thumb or a pacifier, she started biting her nails. I didn't realize she was doing it until I saw that her nails were all bitten down--then I started watching to see if she was doing it, and she wasn't doing it during the day at all, so I was confused, but then I saw her doing it at bedtime.
I feel kind of guilty about this. I read this book called Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing and one of the things the author talks about is that her pre-discovery-of-ecological-breastfeeding children vs. post, the ones who were not ecologically breastfed all had issues with thumb sucking, nail biting, etc, whereas the ones who were completely pacified at the breast and allowed to totally decide their own pace of weaning had no such stress coping oral behaviors.
It might just be a coincidence. According to Baby Center and other places, lots of kids start biting their nails around this age. Also I bite my nails so she might be imitating me.
The "expert" advice for this age is just to ignore the behavior in toddlers, since unlike thumb/finger sucking it doesn't have any orthodontic effects (especially because the fingers fall out of the mouth when falling asleep, unlike a thumb sucker who might have the thumb in for hours), most children outgrow it on their own, and (most importantly) the prevention treatments (nail polish etc) aren't safe for toddlers.
IDK I still feel a bit guilty. :(
---
You may have heard (or know from experience) that second pregnancies show a lot faster than firsts. This is definitely true in my case. I pulled out the maternity clothes last week, and I'm really glad I did, for several reasons:
1. With the morning sickness, any kind of pressure around the abdomen exacerbated it. That was actually the impetus to pulling out the box of maternity clothes; I was sitting on the couch with my pants unbuttoned, and I thought "This is stupid. I could be wearing pants with a stretchy panel right now and then I could feel comfortable without being all gross."
2. My maternity clothes are frankly way nicer than my regular clothes. This is because I have never really been a clothes shopper. I have very low rate of new input, and most of what I get rid of, I get rid of only with sadness after it is worn out. I am still wearing shirts bought in high school. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if as much as half of my t-shirts are from high school. In some cases shirts that are over ten years old!
So maternity was really a unique opportunity to buy a number of items as an adult with my adult tastes. I did get a few pieces second hand, but now with my recent maternity/nursing 2-in-1 wear splurge especially, most of what I have, I chose. And what I've gone for is much more tailored, more feminine, more mature, and more dressy than my normal outfit basics, which is mostly t-shirt + jeans.
3. Maternity tops are often extra long too and cut more generously in the chest, and that's always a relief to me. Much of what I like best in my maternity tops (like the turtleneck I'm wearing now), if I tried to buy similar cuts for a non-pregnant figure, most brands are assuming a woman four inches shorter than me. And proportionate to the rest of me my chest is somewhat bigger than typical (at least according to the waist/bust measurements in sizing charts), which exacerbates the problem because that means the shirt gets caught up there, or I have to buy a shirt which fits in the chest but hangs around me like a curtain.
Oh, that brings up another important point, which is that aside from a few second-hand gifts, my maternity clothing is tailored/figure-following with implied or outright empire waist. EMPIRE WAIST OR DIE. There are few things less attractive than the maternity shirt that hangs like a tarp. Especially when you're in the End Game. You just look like a bell.
The only thing I don't like about maternity clothing is that maternity pants have even fewer pockets than regular women's pants. I don't know why women's pants makers don't think we need pockets, but we do. Not a single pair of my maternity pants has pockets, not even the jeans. :(
---
Pippa has started biting her nails. She started doing it when I started enforcing having her fall asleep not nursing. Rather than suck her thumb or a pacifier, she started biting her nails. I didn't realize she was doing it until I saw that her nails were all bitten down--then I started watching to see if she was doing it, and she wasn't doing it during the day at all, so I was confused, but then I saw her doing it at bedtime.
I feel kind of guilty about this. I read this book called Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing and one of the things the author talks about is that her pre-discovery-of-ecological-breastfeeding children vs. post, the ones who were not ecologically breastfed all had issues with thumb sucking, nail biting, etc, whereas the ones who were completely pacified at the breast and allowed to totally decide their own pace of weaning had no such stress coping oral behaviors.
It might just be a coincidence. According to Baby Center and other places, lots of kids start biting their nails around this age. Also I bite my nails so she might be imitating me.
The "expert" advice for this age is just to ignore the behavior in toddlers, since unlike thumb/finger sucking it doesn't have any orthodontic effects (especially because the fingers fall out of the mouth when falling asleep, unlike a thumb sucker who might have the thumb in for hours), most children outgrow it on their own, and (most importantly) the prevention treatments (nail polish etc) aren't safe for toddlers.
IDK I still feel a bit guilty. :(