Do pregnant Japanese women wear kimonos?

Hi :)

I'm planning a Japanese themed party for my 25th birthday in March. I'd like to wear a traditional kimono, however by that time I will be 28 weeks pregnant. I was wondering - do Japanese women actually wear kimonos? I know they're supposed to make the body look flat :P

for some reason the word 'pregnant' got omitted from my sentence.. it was meant to read ''Do pregnant Japanese women wear kimonos?''.

Pregnant women today don't wear kimonos. At least I've never seen one. But of course, people in the past wore kimonos whatever condition they were in. Probably up to the 60s, there were quite a few pregnant women that wore kimonos. And of course, you don't use an ordinary hako-obi belt. You use a soft sash.

The soft sash will not go with tomesode as visiting kimono. I know some Japanese young women who wore kimono during pregnancy. They were very good and elegant dressers. If the lady wears kimono during pregnancy, she needs a hara-obi, it's not "maternity girdle" in Japanese. Anyway, one who wear kimono needs some getting used to it.

This is just an aside. "Taiko" isn't a name of obi's type.

I don't know why NipponDanji brought up Taiko, but I guess I wanted to say that pregnant women can't use fukuro-obi. I don't know why I wrote "hako"!

I see.

I'm looking for somewhere to learn how to properly do a traditional Japanese pregnancy girdle wrap. Is the proper name for this a Hako obi or Taiko obi, (for the girdle wrap?) x

Gayle,

I'm not sure what you mean by "pregnancy girdle wrap" but I would naturally imagine that you mean "hara-obi (literally meaning 'tummy belt'" which has nothing to do with kimonos. There is also no "proper" way of wrapping it. You just wrap it around and around and around while adjusting it so that you'll feel comfortable. You can even sew it and cut it to fit your needs.