Kate Middleton is my style icon! She looks fantastic in everything she wears and I particularly follow what she wears on royal visits and charity dinners. I regularly see that everything she wears will sell out in minutes and generally these items are completely out of my price range.
Since she's been pregnant with her second baby and as you know I'm pregnant as well, I've been keeping my beady eyes on her maternity wardrobe.
Again, most items I couldn't afford, that is until last week when she stepped out in an ASOS dress!
As always she looked fabulous, of course it helps that she's radiating the pregnancy glow, a pregnancy symptom that I seem to have missed altogether. Within minutes I tried to buy the dress and it was already sold out, well of course it would be, it is a bargain at £35!
Thinking I had no chance I gave up.
The following day my friend Gemma had a look and weirdly enough they had just added a couple of the dresses in my size! It's fate, Gemma jumped on it and quickly ordered me one. Minutes later they were sold out again. How lucky was that?!
The dress arrived yesterday and it's lovely, as it's maternity there is plenty of room for bump to grow into. It'll look lovely with a pair of wedges in the summer and is very flattering to all your other pregnancy lumps and bumps!
Finally I own something that Kate also does! I wonder what will be the next item I add to my maternity clothing collection...
I've come to the conclusion that maternity wear is generally not fashionable.
It's ill-fitting especially if you're either really short or really tall. Being quite tall I find it difficult to buy trousers at the best of times but being pregnant it's almost impossible. Very few places sell tall maternity trousers. Another spring favourite of mine are midi dresses but the maternity ones all come up too short so just above my now chubby knees, not a good look for the spring!
I am not a fan of leggings at all and never really have been. Over the winter and in recent weeks I've been living in them for work with dresses as they're comfortable but then at the weekends I just want to wear something different and more appropriate for my age.
It's hard to not feel like a frump especially when you start to show as I'm realising this past few weeks. I still want to wear skinny jeans and nice dresses but I realise I have an ever growing bump to wear. Just because I'm pregnant doesn't mean I now have a desire to wear a tent!
I also don't have the bank balance (or figure!) of Kate Middleton who just seems to carry off maternity clothing effortlessly! I begrudge spending a fortune on clothes that I'm only going to wear for another few months.
Luckily my very dear friend Caroline has loaned me a lot of her maternity clothes which is really helping me at the moment and fortunately someone recommended the New Look Maternity Jeggings, these do come in longer legs and actually fit really nicely. I feel I may be living in these as they're great to dress up with wedges or dressing down with sandals or flip flips.
I'd love to hear about your recommendations for maternity wear or any tips!
Over the past few weeks my hormones have been a nightmare.
I snap at the slightest of things, no one can do right for doing wrong and I'm an emotional wreck!
When I first became pregnant and read about hormones and all these stories about hormonal mums-to-be I thought 'oh that'll never be me, I could never be that bad' - wrong! I really can be and before you think you won't be either, think about how bad you are with PMT and treble it!
Given that a lot of the time I have every reason to get snappy, sometimes I wonder if I am just over-reacting. For example, this morning we woke up to no hot water, I had to go to work and leave Simon to deal with it, by lunchtime the agency hadn't sent anyone round or called Simon with a time, Mr Laid-back was quite OK with this, me on the other hand launches into a fit or rage 'it's not on, I need hot water, they need to pull their fingers out'. A very un-happy Clare!
In my hormonal rage I'm not sure if this is justified or not but it really highlighted to me my very short fuse at the moment. You have all been warned!
The crying is also an issue, I burst into tears at the drop of a hat and over the slightest thing. I'm not normally an emotional person, well not visibly anyway but pregnancy has put a stop to that. I was crying the whole way through Comic Relief on Friday and when watching One Born Every Minute I was a blubbering mess even though I'd spent the whole episode moaning about how the parents were acting so had no emotional ties with them at all. As soon as that baby popped out I was crying Gazza style!
Short fuse definitely describes me this week and no doubt for a few weeks to come. Good luck to everyone around me, that's all I can say...
