Your Mama Loves Wardrobe 911

Whether you are pregnant or have just gained a few extra pounds around your waistline (like me), you don’t have to abandon your entire closet and buy bigger clothes. There is an easy way to get extra room in the waistband of your existing pants and skirts so you can stay in your regular clothes longer when you are pregnant or give yourself the breathing room while you lose those extra couple of pounds.

I have been using a rubber band to get into most of my jeans for the last month, but there are many brands of waistband extenders on the market. They can give you anywhere from an extra 1/4″ to 2″ in the waist, and vary a bit in design. There are the kind that actually installs another button on the waistband, and the kind that hooks onto the existing button. Most of them can be purchased through our Amazon affiliate links.

The Metal Button Extendershook over your existing jeans or pants button and give you an extra inch or more, which can mean the difference between comfort or a muffin top. These are sturdy and sell for $9.95.

The Waistband Extenderis a plastic extender. It is $9.99 and the drawback I see is that it doesn’t stretch. It does give you an extra inch.

Adjust A Button is a movable button that adds up to 1.5 inches to the waistband. The pin attached to the button inserts where you need it and fastens in the back with a spring clasp. You can move it around as many times as you need. This one is $18, but you get two of them and they look more like a typical jeans button.

The Easy Fit Extenders are a nifty product because it comes with a button extender and with the hook-type extender, depending on the type of pants you have. These are $9.50.

If you are pregnant, I found this great product called B-Buckles. You hook them through the belt loops on either side of the zipper and snap. These are $20 and come in a bunch of different designs. Here is the plain denim. It looks like you could wear your own jeans and pants throughout most if not all of your pregnancy. I had twins, so that would have been a stretch for me. Literally.

So if you are like me and are having trouble buttoning your pants lately, around $10 will buy you a solution. Ten dollars is a lot better than the price of an entirely new wardrobe if you plan to drop those pounds as soon as possible. For just a twenty, you might not need any of those oh-so-fashionable maternity pants!

If you have come across another great product to extend your waistband, I would love to know!

About the author:  Let’s not tell Laurin's husband she's on the Internet writing about her love of white t-shirts and her devotion to reality TV. Read more from this author.