Cold Weather and Pregnancy

The freezing temperatures this morning caused me to put on a heavy coat. The season has started, I guess. The problem was the coat was nowhere near zipping up. I got scolded by another mother, after dropping my daughter off at school, for not covering up my neck. Native New Yorkers tend to get overzealous, I've noticed, about the cold weather. It's as if New York were in the tropics and any temperature below 55 degrees is some sort of concern.  My daughter's teacher thought she would be too cold on the walk home, so bundled her into two coats, against which Prairie protested the whole way home. Okay. so it was cold this morning. It's only November and it's still Fall. I refuse to get the heavy gear out.  Cold weather kills germs.  I think I blogged earlier that I either wasn't going to get a maternity winter coat or that I'll have to break down and buy one.  Baby is to be born in early December. Still technically Autumn.  Whatever I wrote, let it be updated to this announcement: I'm not getting a maternity coat. It's no surprise that the belly is master of me now. I have to succumb to its whims. The belly has taken over my life. But I refuse to break my banking account.  By Christmas let's hope the belly is 50 percent back.  The buttons of my winter coats that I already own will reach the buttonholes.  They better. Truly cold weather doesn't come until February, in my opinion. So I will have two months of breastfeeding and more sensible eating to get back into shape. I should probably exercise too. Oops, I am getting ahead of myself.  I've got 6 more weeks before baby. If the weather were to stay in the 30's during this time, I still won't buy a maternity coat. That's final.  Belly will just have to bear it. It'll toughen up the little one inside. Build character.  The amniotic fluid, thick wall of the uterus, the belly fat, and skin are keeping the baby as warm as can be. A $150 coat from Macy's isn't going to keep belly and baby any warmer.  I couldn't even go to Macy's if I tried. Try getting off the subway at 34th and 7th on any regular day of the week and you're swarmed by the biggest intersection of people in NYC.  Going into Macy's is like going into a football game at Penn State. Over 100,000 people are in there at any given moment. Finding the coat section would be near impossible. I swore of Macy's the last time I was there when I only made it halfway across the first floor and became claustrophobic. Now my belly would be in the way, to say the least, and I'd be a human bumper car. But Macy's has the best coat sales all year round. Too bad. I'll be fine, brisk but fine.