I have an admission to make.  Although I've never worn any, I'm darn good at finding cheap maternity clothes.  I'm actually pretty darn good at finding cheap anything anymore, but maternity clothes are what is on my mind today.  I've never actually been a big shopper.  I have however been getting dragged around to stores since I was a young child.

More recently, I've come to recognize shopping for clothes as a necessary part of life that just can't be avoided.  As a way to make the experience more enjoyable for myself, I've decided to become really good at it.  My private goal was to become better at shopping than my wife, so that she wouldn't want me to go with her. 

So, anyway, the last time my wife got pregnant we already had two beautiful little girls who were well past the baby stage.  All of my wife's maternity clothing had been either given away or sold for cheap at a couple of yard sales we had over the years.  Her pregnancy was a happy surprise for us, but we weren't equipped for the whole pregnancy adventure anymore.

It is sort of sad I guess, but with the first child, everything was brand new for the baby and for Mom.  This was more of a second hand endeavor especially for my wife.  She was actually the one who didn't want to spend a ton on maternity clothes this time, just to give them away for close to nothing.  We started searching out deals.  My wife doesn't really like to do much on the computer, so she was in charge of finding deals in the "real" world.  I searched the Internet for cheap maternity clothing for her.

If you are currently looking for cheap clothes to wear while pregnant, you can keep your eyes open for deals, but because of the whole nine month thing, shopping for next years season is a lot tougher to do than it would be for regular clothes.  Of course if you are actually organized enough to know exactly when you plan to be pregnant, scooping bargains on clothing at the end of various seasons is an outstanding way to save money on clothes.  This just isn't practical for most women though.

My wife found that she was able to find some pretty nice clothes at a couple of local consignment shops.  If you aren't familiar with these, they are basically stores where you drop your old items off and the store owner puts them on display for you.  If anything sells, they take a cut of the money as a commission.  There was not a great maternity selection in the consignment stores near us, but you may want to check in your area for similar shops.  Some consignment shops even specialize just in maternity wear.  Unfortunately, we don't have any cheap maternity clothes stores near us.  The prices of these shops could get a little bit high for used clothing, but that is to be expected as the owner needs to make a little bit of money too.

The next stop on the shopping tour for my wife was local thrift stores. She picked up a few things but wasn't really thrilled. The available selection was only about the same as the consignment shops in number, but the quality took a noticeable drop off. This may just be because people were more likely to take designer maternity clothing to a consignment shop than to a Good Will box. Not a bad place to check overall. The prices were cheaper and the quality will probably vary quite a bit depending on the store you visit.

Finally, was the yard sale run. One weekend we scoped out the yard sale ads and circled all of the ones that mentioned maternity clothing. We found the listings in our local Pennysaver and on Craigslist (another place to check for cheap maternity clothing). This was our best experience by far. The clothing we found was well kept and the women selling it just wanted it gone so that they could get space back in their houses. By far this was the best of the "real world" places to find cheap designer maternity clothes. Entire outfits were selling for five dollars each. Some still had tags on them for much more than the selling price. Of course some of the items showed some wear, but overall, nice quality and excellent price. This was the best place for finding lightly worn, but cheap designer dresses.  As a bonus, we also found some cheap purses for sale.

As for the online world of shopping, well, it went about as I expected.  Cheap maternity clothes online were actually pretty easy to find.  I knew from spending a lot of time selling on eBay, that people often sell off entire lots of maternity clothes at very nice prices.  There were also some good deals to be had at a few online retailers but nothing came close to what was on eBay.  You can also find new maternity clothes for cheap on eBay, but I would say their strength is definitely the large lots of gently worn maternity clothing.

Overall, we found that our best bet was hitting the garage sales and shopping on eBay.  If you are on a mission to find stylish maternity clothes, I'd give both of them a shot before dropping a ton of money on maternity clothes.