Women these days are proud to be pregnant

Throw away the days when women "with child" were hidden in the house. When pregnancy was taboo and having a baby hush-hush.

It's chic to show and even chiquer to show it off. Pregnant women are chucking the ashamed-to-be-seen attitudes and brandishing their bellies. They're sitting for portraits, making stomach molds and wearing tight-fitting, even tummy-showing, maternity clothes.

A few sideway glances from the older generation didn't stop Heidi Milligan from parading her pregnancy.

Until her son, Cade, was born three weeks ago, the 26-year-old bought shirts a size too small or altered baggy blouses to show off baby within.

"I loved being pregnant. I felt very confident, physically -- not sexy or anything -- it's very emotional. It was just that nothing bothered me. Being pregnant put everything in perspective."

Working in a hair salon, Milligan said some of the older women looked down on her openness but the younger generation "loved that I was proud to be pregnant."

Stats say women are waiting to have kids and having less of them when they do -- pregnancies reached a 20-year-record low in 1997 -- but style says: When pregnant, it's cool to uncover. Even this month's Vogue lists pregnant as a body type, right there with tall, pear-shaped and petite.

Since last fall, trendy maternity clothes have become tighter fitting and tailored around the belly, said Jill Donnelly, manager at A Pea in the Pod in Utica Square.

Some designers have cropped pants below the waist and blouses above to show the entire tummy.

"Since we live in a more conservative area here in Tulsa, a lot of women still choose the conservative clothing, but there's a lot of people -- especially younger women -- who go for the more-fitted clothes."

After baby is born, women may rush to shed the weight but so many don't want to forget the last nine months. So they memorialize it.

Keeley Stringfellow makes plaster molds of moms' bellies. The work put the 27-year-old through two years of medical school in Kansas City, Kan., and after just three months in Tulsa, she's had 14 or 15 clients. Stringfellow is opening a salon that will add massage and aromatherapy to the one- to two-hour molding process.

Using petroleum jelly and medical-grade plaster of Paris, Stringfellow covers the entire torso and finishes the mold for $150, which includes the hardware to hang it.

Stringfellow has painted many of the finished works to match a room at home but some women keep it white for baby shower guests to sign, she said.

Maybe Demi Moore ignited the fad in 1991 when she posed naked and pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. Spreads of pregnant celebrities, like mothers Cindy Crawford and Jada Pinkett Smith, have followed.

That's where Milligan got the idea to have portraits of her pregnancy. At first, Milligan's husband didn't understand. Why would anyone want to remember being that large?

The baby added some 30 pounds to Milligan's 100-pound frame, and sure she felt "fat and fluffy," but she wanted to capture the "beautiful way I felt inside ... It's very angelic, very surreal."

Photographer and Tulsa newcomer Chris Claussen took the portraits of Milligan's pregnancy and said he's getting more and more requests. "It's a very beautiful thing and people should celebrate it."

Michiele Vargas, owner of Miracles of Life Photography in Broken Arrow, caters to pregnant women. She takes pictures of expecting moms with bare bellies, pregnant but covered bellies, dads feeling the baby kick and soon-to-be older siblings feeling mom's stomach, the 35-year-old mother of three said.

You didn't see bare bellies eight years ago when Shonna Herrman was pregnant with her first child. She's nine months pregnant with her third, a boy who's due this month.

As a labor and delivery nurse, Herrman sees pregnant women all day, every day, and she said, especially in this past year, society's attitude toward pregnancy has sharply turned from conceal to reveal.

With that in mind, Herrman had pictures shot at Miracles of Life to show that for "nine months I have done the best I could to ensure that this child will be healthy."