It’s bad enough to compare ourselves to other pregnant women, but to compare ourselves to our non-gestating counterparts is just ridiculous. We often have a bad habit – raise your hand if you’re guilty – of measuring our own looks against those of others. Of course you’re going to be fatter than your husband’s co-worker: you’re carrying a baby, a placenta, extra fat stores, extra blood volume, and water weight … and she isn’t! If you’ve ever told yourself to stop comparing, now’s definitely the time to enforce it. Make yourself stop, or you’ll just end up feeling worse.
Don’t wear your husband’s clothes.
When you’re feeling like you’re about fourteen months pregnant, and you’re so wide that you beep when backing up, it’s sorely tempting to raid your significant other’s closet – nothing else you have, even your maternity wardrobe, fits you quite right any more! But trust me on this one: wearing his clothes, or even buying women’s clothing in bigger sizes, will only make you feel frumpy. Pregnant women are shaped differently, and therefore need clothes that are cut differently (if we could just get away with wearing bigger sizes, there would be no market especially for maternity clothing). You should, at all times, have at least one maternity outfit that makes you feel good, and preferably several so you’ll have a variety to choose from. It may seem pointless and frivolous to buy maternity clothing when you only have a few weeks left in your pregnancy, but it’s a necessity if you want to look decent. It doesn’t have to be expensive stuff; my very favorite and most durable “pregnant clothes” were Wal-Mart specials, and my pricey brand-name things ended up crumpled on the floor of my closet somewhere.