I love swimming! It’s cooling, refreshing, just an all out relaxing time. During the summer I usually hit up the store to struggle through try on after try on of swimwear. Believe it or not, I’m actually more of a modest person when it comes to my swim gear. I don’t like to show a lot of skin so there’s an extra challenge when it comes to carrying a baby and trying to find a swimsuit.There are several problems when one is in full belly mode and wants to find a decent bathing suit.

1. Most maternity swimwear is online only. This sucks because there’s the potential that it won’t fit AND I have to wait for it to be shipped. (That wasn’t an option for me. I needed a swimsuit like yesterday).

2. Maternity swimwear is specialty so it gets those lovely specialty prices. I’m looking at price tags of $70+ for something I won’t even wear but a couple of times.

3. A lot of maternity bathing suits I found to be heavily one pieced and very few high waisted options. For us non bare skin belly gals with long torsos, one pieces are a gamble when not pregnant and the high waist I mostly found, again, online only. Womp!

What’s a gal to do?????? Well I’ll share what I did. I looked at a couple of things to help me find a reasonable solution. What is swimwear? Usually a suit made up of spandex and nylon. You know what else is made up of nylon and spandex???? Underwear. Yup! You can literally go to any store and find plain black high waist briefs or boy shorts and they will be just as good and probably less expensive than regular swim gear and no one is the wiser. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any that would fit my belly at the moment but best believe I will be using that hack!

Another thing I thought of was the dynamic. If I HAVE to wear a 2 piece, I just need the top long enough to cover my belly. I can still wear the bottoms and feel no shame. Enter Old Navy. I found a really cute luxe tank made from mostly rayon that fit the bill. Rayon is another synthetic fiber you will see a lot of swimwear made from. My tank was on sale for $12 so I snagged it up. 

I wanted to have a fun mix and match texture to my top so I headed to Target to find some bottoms. I ran across a very cute pair of black and white stripe swim bottoms for $18. Black and white is perfect because it can go with so many different items. This was exactly what I was hoping for.

Within the hour I had a complete modest maternity swim set that I was able to purchase in store for $30! Not bad for a first attempt. I’m so happy with my hack and glad that I’ll be able to wear the tank even postpartum. Hope this helps anyone out there that might run into the same dilemma. Always remember there’s another less expensive way! Happy shopping 😊