88 cents

**Warning** this post is completely about my shopping debacle yesterday.

This post will need a little background before the really crushing part will come. While growing up, since probably 9th grade, I have had to spend at least $70-100 on jeans. Some of you may not think that's a lot of money for a pair of jeans, but others may think I'm absolutely crazy. The reason that I have spent so much on jeans is that I'm tall and it seems almost impossible to find jeans that fit me and aren't 2-3 inches too short. My husband thinks it's still way too much for jeans (I never tell him how much my sister spends on jeans because he might have a heart attack) since he wears levis that cost approximately $30 and buys them only when they're on sale for under $20. Since living with him I haven't purchased a pair of jeans for myself. That's not to say I haven't gotten any new jeans, they've just been presents. Anyway, I was thinking that perhaps my husband is right and I'm just looking in the wrong places to find a pair of jeans that fit nice.

Jump to my present situation. I'm almost 18 weeks pregnant and I'm still wearing my size 6 pre-pregnancy jeans. This may sound absurd, but there are a few factors that have made this situation not so bad. Factor 1: they're gap jeans and I don't know if anyone else out there has experienced the phenomenon of the ever expanding gap jeans. The first wear out of the dryer is how they fit in the store for about 1 hour. After that they become pretty big. Before my pregnancy I wore belts to coutneract this, but now I don't need them. The pants just expand. Factor 2: they're a little low cut (not immodestly so, my tummy is always covered). This means that after expanding to full extent they can kinda go below the belly. Keep in mind that I am wearing maternity shirts so they cover that whole area anyway. This has been OK up until a little while ago that I noticed that trying to bend over to pick things up or lean forward when I'm sitting down is uncomfortable. I decided last week that I really should just bite the bullet and go purchase some pregnancy jeans.

Jean shopping has always been depressing for me because I try on about a billion jeans that fit great, but are too short or that are long enough, but way too big. Also my concern was that pregnancy clothing is a restricted category as it is so there wont be the selection I would like. I was thinking about how much I used to spend on jeans when I happened to see that JCPenny was having a buy one get the second for 88 cents sale on their maternity clothing. I decided for 88 cents I can at least go try. I went with my sister-in-law who is also pregnant. My excitement was actually building when going in because you have to have positive thinking when shopping. We tried on jeans and pants and shirts. NONE of them were long enough. In fact some of them were so short that my sister-in-law laughed when I came out of the dressing room. She found some really really cute jeans that fit her great. I decided to buy two shirts just so that the trip wasn't a bust. I guess I'm just stuck wearing my pre-prego jeans until I can figure something else out. At least this way nobody can say I didn't try.