South Coast Plaza Shopping Spree

Bright and early (11am) on April 24, 2010 (mom's birthday) Kendall, Mom and I got up and headed to Costa Mesa to do some maternity shopping. There are FOUR maternity stores at South Coast Plaza and I needed to find something to wear to the Ellen Show. I have maternity clothes. Plenty of them in fact, BUT I needed something cute and bright and business casual.

Our first stop was H&M Maternity. They had some cute stuff. I tried on 9 tops, but nothing was just awesome, so we decided that if need be, we could go back at the end of the day and pick out one of the so-so tops.

The next stop was Pea in a Pod...and frankly...they think that only skinny girls can afford their clothes. Why? Because the largest they carried was a size Large. Now, most people I know go up at least one size in maternity clothes. This means that if you were larger than a medium pre-pregnancy, you are SOL. I tried on a few larges. But being that my ribcage now measures a whopping 40 inches, there was no such luck.

We had to make a pit stop at Godiva Chocolate to stock up on my latest craving (solid dark chocolate):

The next stop was Gap Maternity...yes, they have an actual store front at South Coast Plaza. I tried on maybe 15 items there and ended up with two. I got a beautiful aqua/teal angora sweater (for the Fall postpartum) that was marked down over and over again and was less than $10.00 after all the discounts. I also got this:

Regular $34.50 on sale for $24.99, then marked down to $14.99 PLUS Gap was having a 40% off all sale prices.

At this point I was feeling quite tired and grumpy, and swollen and thirsty, so we headed to Boudin for a snack. My snack was half a turkey cranberry sandwich and a bowl of Clam Chowder. Mom had a bowl of clam chowder in a bread bowl and Kendall ordered 2 soft pretzels and cheese from Claim Jumper (and I ate some of that too).

Our next stop was Destination Maternity. This store was awesome. It is a Motherhood Maternity (which alone is a big fat eww for customer service) and a Pea in a Pod (and eww for them as well) but this combo store did great. They had plus sizes too! Score for me because my hiney is now a 1x. Yes, I am shocked that I even put it, but you know what? Pregnancy is not a slimming thing...well, for a few people it is, but for the majority of women, you are fat, puffy and swollen. I told Justin about my need for a 1x to have space in my pants and he said "Don't feel bad honey...one ex is not one ex, its times one...and since there are two of you, it makes sense." Bless his heart. He is too sweet. I tried on about 150 pieces at this store. No joke! It took three hours and four potty breaks. Kendall and mom were so helpful bringing clothes in to the dressing room, helping me try them on (life is a little tippy right now), hanging the rejects back up, and dealing with my swollen, grumpy, tired pregnant lady attitude. I ended up getting this top for the Ellen Show...

Pretty Pink Top ($14.99)

These bottoms ($24.98):

And a cute dress...just because ($19.99):

Our final stop was Nordstrom to get a new bra (or three).

The Wacoal Awareness Contour Bra ($65) in a 40G (yup, we've grown about 4ish cup sizes)

An Anita International Underwire Nursing Bra ($69) (in a 40H, lovely, huh)

And last but not least, one of my very favorites the Natori Foundations Bra ($48). I LOVE these but my old ones are too small in a 40DDD ack!

**By the way, the bra sizes are noted for my own personal records. You all, my fellow readers, are going to have to deal with this minor ginormous detail.

After running like crazy people, we were kicked out of Nordstroms at 7:30pm because they were having some special event and got on the 91 freeway parking lot. The traffic slowed way down in the canyon...turns out that a Mercedes Benz got too close to the K-Rail and drove up the side of it...all the while I am practically tearing up because I have to pee so bad.

We got back to Temecula at 9pm and hit up Rodrigos for mom's birthday dinner. It was a fun, but extremely tiring day.

Sunday, we went out shopping in Temecula for mom. She needed to find a nice outfit for an interview. Poor thing, we were going to shop for her at South Coast Plaza and ran out of time, so she got stuck shopping in Temecula. I was sooo tired by the time we finished shopping for her. Two back to back days is a lot for this pregnant lady.