In need of some support

At almost 26 weeks (tomorrow), I have come to the realization that the most important thing right now is not getting the nursery ready or getting a list together of the items that we still need. It's getting a *&^%$#@ bra that actually fits.

When I bought my first maternity clothes, I bought a nursing bra off the rack, without trying it on. Big mistake. I don't think the bra would have fit me even if I weren't pregnant. Then I ordered two "sleep" bras, which do fit and are quite comfortable, but they offer no support whatsoever. They really are designed just to keep the puppies reined in while I'm in bed.

The most obvious thing to do was to order bras online from a maternity clothing company, and to follow their sizing instructions to the letter. I measured my ribcage just below my breasts, and then measured my chest at the widest part. This particular company gave a place to input those numbers, and it specifically told me what size to get. How helpful. I ordered two underwire support bras for day-to-day wear, since that's what I usually wear, and two sports bra-style bras that were less supportive but supposed to be pretty comfortable.

Well, I don't know where this company came up with their equation, but it didn't work. The sports bras barely fit; while they technically cover everything, the soft cups inside do not. What's weird about it is that my breasts kind of conform to the odd shape during the course of the day. At the bottom of the bra, where my excess boobage sort of escapes from the cups, they take on this weird flat shape that has a slightly different texture than the rest of the breast. I guess this is from the milk ducts and glands that are in the process of forming. But it's weird. And the underwire bras don't fit at all. I'm at least one full cup size bigger, probably more like two full cup sizes. And it isn't that my breasts have grown since I measured them; they are just too darned small.

So out of the seven maternity bras I have purchased, two of them fit well but cannot be used during the day, two of them fit somewhat but leave me rather lumpy and kind of uncomfortable, and three don't fit at all. The good news in all this is that I'm pretty sure if I go up a couple cup sizes, I'll find something that fits. But now of course I'm concerned that if I order something now, at six months along, it may not fit in three more months. I'm already big as a cow (at least it feels that way); how much more am I going to grow in three months?