This post is part of a series on maternity wardrobe essentials and approaches to dressing for pregnancy. See the complete series.
Ah, the second trimester. By all accounts, pregnancy’s golden age: the risk of miscarriage is greatly reduced, you’re likely ready to share your news with friends, colleagues and family, nausea (it isn’t morning sickness at 11:30 p.m.!) and exhaustion are mostly a thing of the past, and you’re finally starting to look pregnant (at least a little…), but aren’t yet (a) hugely uncomfortable or (b) ready to burn anything that says “maternity” on the tag. As always, we are all beautiful and unique snowflakes, so your mileage may vary, but here are a few strategies from and highlights of my second trimester:
Before and After
For a little perspective, here’s what I looked like at the beginning of my second trimester, a time period which spanned the end of my second year of law school and the beginning of my summer work at a law firm in the city:
Acquire with Long-Term Wearability in Mind
The second trimester is when most women find they start to need a significant number of maternity items, and in particular, maternity tops and dresses. As I started to pull together some of these pieces, E. gave me some great advice that I’ll pass along here: try to resist buying tops and dresses in the first half of your pregnancy that don’t at least have some post-pregnancy potential (particularly if you plan on nursing). The first three of these pieces are from Japanese Weekend’s “d&a” (or “during and after”) line, designed with various forms of easy nursing access — and I’ve worn all of them in the first few weeks of m.’s life. The last, a wrap dress I snagged during the first of what turned out to be many desperate Target runs, represents a different kind of long-term thinking: although the fit was slightly awkward at the beginning, I wore it at least biweekly from week 15 to week 41.
Embrace the Empire Waist
This is a tough one for me to sell, since I’m now ready to burn anything in my closet with an empire waist, but it was an incredibly practical silhouette. On a pregnant woman, it reads as “yes, I’m really pregnant” rather than “I’m wearing this shirt that makes me look pregnant and I’m not really sure why!” And while an enormous number of maternity items are empire waisted, there’s something about this look during the second trimester that looks a little more polished and a little less … twee. Again, your mileage may vary, but I felt less like an overstuffed pumpkin wearing these kinds of looks in my second trimester than my third. Empire waists can also be a great way to stretch your non-pregnancy wardrobe (or newly-acquired non-maternity items) a little bit longer: while the tunic on the left is, in fact, a maternity item, the one on the right is not — just a two-sizes up top I snagged at a clothing swap.
Go Long…or Short
For whatever reason, long cardigans with wide-leg (or wide-ish-leg) trousers are fixed in my head as being associated with Life Before I Understood Proportions, so I’m not quite sure why I wore so many of these combinations while pregnant. And yet…something about that silhouette being interrupted by my nascent baby bump muted its leg-shortening, long-torso-emphasizing characteristics and made this kind of cozy, slouchy, untucked (gasp!) look work for me. It became yet another example of experimenting with my unfamiliar body in a way that was unexpectedly exciting and fun. Cropped toppers were less of a surprise (see above re: long torso), but particularly early on, they helped to show off what bumpage I had while still preserving the illusion of a waistline.
Drape, and Drape Again
Although I was ambivalent about draping early in my pregnancy, I came to see the advantages later on. See, the thing is, maternity waistband choice is complicated and fluctuating (about which more later. Really. A whole separate post.). Depending on how you carry, different options may be easier, harder or downright impossible. In my particular case, because I carried fairly close in and somewhat spread out to the sides (which the old wives tell me is typical of someone carrying a girl), a number of the available options left me with something of a preggers muffin-top, which I was particularly self-conscious about during my second trimester (when it was not, much as I believed it was, obvious that I was pregnant). Enter these two draped tops, both gifts from my saintly Mum: not only did they feel incredibly luxurious, they simplified dressing on the days that I didn’t want to spend twenty minutes precisely arranging the right combination of slips, camisoles and other undergarments to avoid Segmented Worm Syndrome.
Recently (or not so recently) pregnant? What were your best tips and tricks from the middle of your pregnancy? Things you wish you’d done differently, or would do again in a heartbeat?
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Above:
- Pre-pregnancy Bootcut Jeans: Kut from the Kloth via Nordstrom
- Scarf: Target
- Rust Slub-Knit Tee: Gap Maternity
- Metallic Loafers: Naturalizer via DSW
- BeBand: BeMaternity (Ingrid & Isabel) via Target
Below:
- Brown Die-cut Flats: Lifestride via Zappos.com
- Silver Necklace: gifted
- Orange Draped Top: Olian Maternity
Baby m. needed some extra snuggles, so she decided to join us for these photos. We hope you don’t mind. Incidentally, she turned one month old this weekend. When did THAT happen?
Oh, man. If I had a kingdom, I’d trade it for some clothes with a regular waistband. You know, one with a proper closure. Seriously.
I’m almost-but-not-quite able to wear my pre-pregnancy pants and skirts, including these beloved bootcut jeans. So close, but yet so far: while they button, there’s an unacceptable risk of muffinage. A rubber band and my BeBand make them wearable for low key around-the-house days, but in my non-pregnant state, it seems to take away some of their essential je ne sais quoi as, well, jeans. On the other end of the spectrum, most of my early-stage maternity pants are too large to stay up, which isn’t very practical for someone who spends much of her day on the floor.
So what’s a recently-pregnant gal to do? I’m normally the champion of the theory of buy clothes for the body you have now, but there are limits on that theory: while I’ve (admittedly) stalled out a bit in my post-partum weight loss, I’m determined to get back into shape, and I’d rather not spend a fortune on clothes that I’m hoping won’t fit in [insert appropriate time period here]. Dresses and jersey skirts work well for class and for some of my at-home days, but it turns out, I haven’t yet figured out a way to get by entirely without pants for the truly casual moments I’ve been relishing this fall, including taking baby m. on her first hiking trips to the park.
This is, of course, both a practical problem and a psychological one, requiring some sartorial creativity and some emotional discipline on my part. But help me out, dear readers: how do you dress when your physical form is in a state of flux, whatever the cause? How do you honor both the body and the budget you have today?
Incidentally, I’m taking some of Amy of BiblioMOMia’s great advice on fall trends and the postpartum body from her guest post in these outfits — be sure to take a look at the full list!
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- Beloved Black Jersey Faux-Wrap Dress: Ann Taylor
- Black Tights: HUE
- Brown Riding Boots: Franco Sarto via Zappos.com, recently reheeled
- Taupe Draped Cardigan: vince via Nordstrom’s, gift from mom
- Necklace: Gifted
- Earrings: Mall vendor
Given that I didn’t buy any long-sleeved maternity items and was at strong risk of outgrowing my sweaters during the final days of my pregnancy, it was awfully obliging of baby m. to decide to make her appearance just as the seasons changed rather dramatically around here. I’m not quite sure how or exactly when it happened, but some time during the two and a half weeks we were both home full time, getting acquainted with baby m. We’ve had our share of occasional warm days since then, but for the most part, it’s definitely fall: a little greyer, still rainy (sigh), and with that sense of seriousness that accompanies the second half of term.
Of course, fall is also my favorite season for clothes: chilly enough that you aren’t dealing with the drastic imbalance between sweating outside and freezing indoors, but not so cold that you look like the michelin man. Just crisp enough that you can get away with wearing those polished-but-cozy items in your closet that are, for whatever reason, made for days of reading, (baby snuggles!) and pumpkin-spice lattes. Okay, that wasn’t quite what I was doing when I wore this outfit, but bear with me….
I wore this outfit to brunch at my in-laws’ house a week after we brought baby m. home from the hospital. It was only our third trip “somewhere” with her (as in, not out on a walk for the sake of going for a walk), and was my first attempt at nursing in quasi-public (about which more later) while relatively nicely dressed. Enter both old and new(er) favorites: my brown riding boots, re-heeled for the season, my well-worn black jersey dress, dragged out of storage, and this draped cardigan, gifted by mom during my pregnancy but with a great many snuggly glory days still to come. The surplice neckline provided the necessary, er, access, while the cardigan and my Hooter Hiders kept everyone else from getting too adult a show. Meanwhile, baby m. delighted our friends and relatives, and we were able to enjoy out first outing that spanned multiple sleep-wake-eat cycles.
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- Printed Knot Top: Banana Republic, on long-term loan from A2.’s closet
- Black Jersey Skirt: Mountain Hardware via Hudson Trail Outfitters
- Brown Die-Cut Flats: Lifestride via Zappos.com
Hey! Look! I’m not pregnant anymore!
At times, I wasn’t quite sure that would ever happen!
This isn’t what I wore on Tuesday, my first day back in classes, but these are my first post-partum outfit photos, taken when baby m. was seven days old (I look—I hope!—slightly less dead-eyed at this point). I’m still getting my bearings in so many ways right now—including sartorially—but this is a reasonable representation of the kind of thing I’ve been wearing much of the time: some vaguely nursing/pumping friendly top (I’m trying not to wreck this one, A2.!), flats, and a jersey skirt of some stripe or another. This formula has pros and cons (gentle on my recovering waistline, but not always so practical for someone who now spends large stretches of time crawling around on the floor), but it fills an important need in my post-partum style vocabulary, giving me the chance to feel “assembled” without having to fret quite as much about whether what I’m wearing fits just so or whether I’m wrecking some beloved and non-machine-washable item with the inevitable baby spit up. It’s not the solution to all of my getting-dressed-post-baby challenges (about which more later), but it certainly helps with some of them!
Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that Tuesday was my first day back in class since baby m. was born, and were kind enough to pass along some much-needed encouraging words as I prepared m. for a fantastic day with my mother-in-law and tried to pull together my deepest thoughts about the horizontal merger guidelines. On the whole, my first day back was great: m. had a great day at home, and I felt, surprisingly, more efficient and balanced for the experience. We’re still working out some of the logistical details of how I’m going to get homework done on the two days a week I’m home with m. (without becoming nocturnal and/or destroying what’s left of our weekends), but almost three weeks in to being a full-time law student and a first-time parent, I feel . . . if not very nearly competent, at least less spastic than I expected. And that’s progress, right?
Still, in the spirit of hilarious comments law students are willing to make, I have to relate by far the funniest moment from my first day back at school. A young woman in my antitrust class, who competes on the moot court team with me and is a friend of friends, turned around at the break and said, at full volume and across about a two row separation in the classroom, “Oh, [S.], were you absent the last two weeks?” My friends sitting in the adjacent seats laughed, and I looked at her a little bit funny and said, “yeah. . . I don’t know if you remember, but I had a baby two weeks ago.” She was rather taken aback (understandably), and the rest of the folks in the room laughed. Of course, she apparently recovered quickly, since a few minutes later, she managed to ask me a rather hilarious variant on “was that planned?” In a way, it was a very funny reminder that as fraught as the embodied experience of being pregnant—and being a parent—can seem to the person living it, more of that struggle than you’d think is completely invisible to the outside world.
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Hello Lovely readers of Narrowly Tailored! I’m so excited for S. and her new little one to spend some time getting to know each other! I’m Kayla, and I blog over at Internal Sequin Issues. Living in the Northeast I’ve become pretty accustom to the changing seasons. As we transition from Summer to Fall, one of the key pieces that will be added to everyone’s wardrobe will be a great coat ( or two or three!). Keep in mind a few key tips when looking for a new coat and you can get through the changing seasons with an amazing top layer.
1. Proportions are Key
( Coat: Weathervane- Purchased at local Goodwill $10)
Knowing what proportions flatter you best is extremely important when it comes to shopping for jeans and tops, why should it be any different for Coats? Nothing is more unflattering than a lovely lady whose coat hits her oddly halfway across her thighs, or hangs off of her shoulders. If you wouldn’t wear a shirt that fell past your waist, than why buy a coat that does?
2. Don’t be afraid of Patterns and Color
( Coat: Charlotte Russe $5)
Of course it makes sense to stick with neutral color jackets because they go with everything but adding a jacket with a bold pattern or color can really bring a great element to what would otherwise be a dreary day. I not only own this Red Checked coat, but also a Green Plaid coat, a Blue Wool coat and a Purple swing coat, and am shocked every year at how often I can wear them. A bold coat means you can keep your outfit underneath neutral, and let the jacket do all the talking for you.
3. Amazing Coats mean Comfy Clothes
(Coat: Vintage purchase via Etsy $26)
My favorite part about the colder weather? When I’m adding an extra layer with a Coat, I can sneak a comfy outfit underneath and no-one has to know. Some days you wake up and just don’t want to take off your Pajamas, so why not throw on a wearable alternative and put on a fantastic coat? This amazing Vintage Coat is my favorite comfy outfit friend. I can wear the most boring out outfits underneath, and no-one will be the wiser. They’ll all be to busy admiring my coat.
Coats can be fashionable while they provide warmth and isn’t that the biggest annoyance of the changing season? With a great Coat Collection, instead of dreading the end of summer, I look forward to the weather changing and bringing out my extra layers.
Even though I’m [finally!] no longer pregnant, I wanted to wrap up my maternity style chronicles with some of my favorite looks from my last week of pregnancy. Rest assured, I’ll catch back up to the present soon!
Above:
- Draped Grey-Brown Cardigan: vince via Nordstrom, gift from Mom
- Black Tank: beMaternity via Target
- Black Ponte “Real Waist” Maternity Trousers: LOFT Maternity
- Brown Die-cut Flats: Lifestride via Zappos.com
- Necklace: gifted
- Army Green Dolman Wrap Sweater: Forever 21
- Printed Dress: Boden
- Earrings: Target
- Necklace: gifted
- Brown Die-cut Flats: Lifestride via Zappos.com
I know you’re not “supposed” to care about your due date, which is admittedly pretty arbitrary, but once I got past mine (and, okay, a little before then), I’ll admit that my patience was wearing pretty thin on the ground. I had been in prodromal labor from 37 weeks on, and was told at doctor’s appointment after doctor’s appointment that my OB “didn’t expect to see me next week, because I would surely deliver by then.” With due respect to the medical profession, m. completely ignored these predictions, and required some extra help to emerge four weeks later. In a way, it was proof my daughter was already smarter than I am: while she seemed totally unperturbed by the suggestion that she should be on her way out, I managed to be needlessly stressed and anxious (mostly with joyful anticipation!) about it for some time. I know, the world’s smallest violin is playing just for me, right?
So what do you wear when you’re just. so. over. being pregnant and the utterly dreary weather (apparently it rained here 18 of 30 days in September), on your last two “work days” before taking a (brief) maternity leave? Snuggly sweaters, man-made flats that won’t get ruined in the rain, and large expanses of the same color in an attempt to add some length to my not-so-long-and-lean frame. And in a way, these last outfits harkened back to the very beginning of my maternity style journey: this dress was literally one of the last two things I wore before I found out I was pregnant. I had shelved these pants during the late second and early third trimester periods, when I was carrying the baby too high for them to be particularly comfortable, but as the baby dropped (and dropped, and dropped!, said my sacrum), they started to work again (and admittedly, gave me an unreasonable and mostly inappropriate body image boost, because, hey, my first trimester pants?!?!? really?!?!). And finally, finally, I wore that outfit my mum was always hoping I would wear, even though I hoped(!) I wouldn’t have time. I was overdone, antsy, and (let’s face it), I looked like the Great Wall of China (or at least felt like I did), but . . . well, pardon the sappy ending, but I feel a lot happier about the state of my body — and my wardrobe — in the final hours of my pregnancy now that I’m getting to know the person I was sharing it with!
So there you have it: the end of my pregnancy style journey (though probably not the last you’ll see of it). I’ll be continuing my series on maternity wardrobe essentials and style strategies over the next few weeks, continuing to feature a fabulous group of guest bloggers, and if you look closely, you might even catch a glimpse of my post-partum style, some musings on life as we now know it, and the occasional picture of baby m. Thanks for bearing with me as I take a little longer than usual to respond to comments and get back to your regularly scheduled programming, and for all your kind wishes and words during this special time in our lives!
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Even though I’m [finally!] no longer pregnant, I wanted to wrap up my maternity style chronicles with some of my favorite looks from my last week of pregnancy. Rest assured, I’ll catch back up to the present soon!
Towards the end of my pregnancy, I fought sartorial boredom by reinventing some looks from earlier in my pregnancy, trying to find ways to adjust these styles to take advantage of my slightly-comical shape. In honor of my due date (on which I was very, very much still pregnant!), I took another look at this outfit, the first look from my very first 30-for-30 remix last fall:
It looks a little different now, doesn’t it?
- Skinnies: Gap Maternity
- Navy Tee: Gap Maternity
- Brown Riding Boots: Franco Sarto via Zappos.com
- Red Cardigan: Vintage Michael Kors, mommed
- Necklace: gifted
- Gold Earrings: Lulu’s, gift from Mom
- Metallic Fabric Belt: LOFT
I’m actually pretty fond of the late-maternity version, and not just because of the charming hilarity of attempting to get myself into my first trimester skinnies and those jeans tucked into my boots on what was supposed to have been the last day of my pregnancy. In a number of ways, this version reflects the ways my style has evolved and matured over the last ten months. The accessories are a little more intentional and are a little bit better coordinated. I’m breaking some rules (hello, mixed metallics), and I’m highlighting the things I love best about my shape — even in its temporarily distorted form.
I didn’t end up actually wearing this look all day — after a few hours, it just felt really impractical — but for a welcome-to-town brunch with my parents and my in-laws, it made me feel really put together and like myself, which was worth a lot at this stage in the process!
Have you been able to make a beloved look work in different sartorial circumstances — accommodating a change in shape, lifestyle or circumstance? When you look back at what you were wearing a year ago, how has your style changed — or not changed?
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I’m M. of An Epic Battle in High Heels, where I mostly blog about trying to professionalize my later stage of PhD wardrobe while slaying demons (i.e. my dissertation, applications, and other such projects). Congrats, S. and family!
This guest post is not going to make any sense if I don’t begin with what seems like an incredibly personal admission for the Internets: A while ago my husband I tried for a few–actually, more than a few–months to conceive and didn’t. Don’t worry. This is not going to be a sad post. We’re okay with it.
When we were in the midst of trying, a number of fashion bloggers on my blog roll, including S., announced their pregnancies and began writing about elasticized maternity trousers and strategies for dressing the gestating body in academic and office situations. Thinking I would soon be dealing with the same issues, I paid close attention. This had an effect on me that I didn’t expect: I reassessed my wardrobe’s pregnancy friendliness and had a hard time of purging my wardrobe of things that had to go but could be incorporated into a maternity wardrobe. I’m also in the late stages of a PhD program and need to work on professionalizing my wardrobe more, but I didn’t want to purchase a pair of dark trouser jeans and a fitted blazer on my limited budget if I could only wear them for another month or so and then would have to buy maternity pants soon after. Furthermore, I had no idea what my body would be like a year later. This put me into a state of wardrobe limbo and it was on my mind a lot when I was blogging at the now suspended Fashionable Academics, but in general women don’t announce “I’m trying to get pregnant and that’s why I’m still holding on to this awful shirt that already makes me look pregnant!”
It feels less strange to talk about it in hindsight, however, so if you’ll indulge me, I will now narrate what was going on in my head while dressing myself last year and trying to conceive. This may be especially interesting to former readers of Fashionable Academics who will have some of my repeat offenses explained:
MVP Red Dress
I had always wished that I had purchased a Small instead of a Medium for a better fit, but my thoughts towards this dress (which I love) changed the day that S. of Academichic and Simply Bike wrote about how a skirt of hers in a size too big was good maternity wear in the second trimester. I began to value this dress for its potential flexibility with an expanding belly.
Wardrobe Purge
Before “use it or lose it” became a thing to do on fashion blogs, I decided to shame myself into getting rid of pieces that I either didn’t wear, hated wearing, or needed never to wear again. I’m so glad I got rid of these because I can only imagine what my 5 feet nothing stature would have looked like while in an in-between stage of showing during pregnancy. But I hesitated to get rid of these because of the roomy shirts and elastic waist skirt.
December – March Limbo
When I didn’t have a meeting and wasn’t teaching, which was after December of last year, I stopped varying the bottom half of my body as much as I used to because I needed some new pieces, but didn’t want to invest in any because they might be wearable soon after. My solution was a frequent bottom-half uniform: black jersey knit skirt, black leggings, and black boots (mostly wellies). These would be paired with some sort of sweater/cardi combination. I figured this was fine, since it was probably how I would soon be dressing out of necessity anyway.
The Discoball Skirt
This skirt marked the end of limbo dressing. I had eyed this skirt for a few weeks, but had been saving a GAP giftcard for maternity jeans. When another month passed without a positive pregnancy test, I bought it. It also marked a shift in my thinking on trying to conceive–I kept taking vitamins and limiting my caffeine intake, but I decided that the state of limbo needed to stop. And seriously, it’s not that much more sustainable than 5 months anyway. Until it actually happened, I needed to dress for the present and look presentable and professional instead of looking like I was constantly leaving dance class. And the present also allowed for some frivolity.
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Hi! I'm S. Welcome to Narrowly Tailored, a blog about life and style from a law student and new mom. In short: work and life gets dressed; balance mostly gets amused.Follow Along
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