Happy New Year, friends! I’ve been off enjoying a little mini stay-cation with my extended family, but even though the gates have closed on 2011, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do a quick recap of my favorite looks from what has been, by all accounts, a totally fabulous year. This list isn’t perfectly temporally balanced, since there were some serious sartorial doldrums in there, but here we go:

January: School starts again! I find out I’m pregnant (at what feels like long last, but really wasn’t). I am told to wear a suit to speak on a panel and don’t feel like it, beginning an extended search for creative and pregnancy-accommodating suit alternatives. After a few blissful days of not being so, I’m so sick and dizzy that I have a nearly out-of-body experience during said panel, but thankfully no one notices. I go to Colorado to help my SIL E. revamp her work wardrobe.

February and March: I go through a phase of not straightening my hair, get elected Editor-in-Chief of my law journal, and complete another 30-for-30 (while only cheating a little bit to account for an emergency lack-of-pants). After a few scary first-trimester moments, a switch to a new OB, and a lot of being really, really sick, we finally tell people I’m pregnant.

April: I go to New Jersey for a moot court competition and it snows (snows! And I have to go back this year!). I speak on lots of panels during which everyone else is wearing black, white and grey. My mum takes pity on my dwindling closet and gifts a number of maternity and non-maternity items my way, starting a long dialogue on dressing the pregnant body in the workplace. I swoon (and agree!) when Sal dubs this “the prettiest maternity dress ever.”

May: I sit my exams and start the first of two summer associate gigs. I attempt to navigate the tricky waters of being pregnant as a summer associate, in a large-firm, large-summer-class, mixed-age environment. I develop an obsession with closely analogous warm-color pairings, even at work, that lasts most of the year. At 20 weeks pregnant, I finally have to give up running and climbing, but I’m able to stay active throughout the rest of my pregnancy. We take a hypnobirthing class from this fabulous woman, and I feel the baby move for the first time.

June: I finally finish last semester’s papers (thank you(?) usual and customary extension). I get to work on a class action defense and do some amazing pro-bono work before wrapping up job #1, and getting ready to start job #2. I participate in Dress Your Best Week, finding things to celebrate about my increasingly-foreign body as the mercury frequently tops 95 degrees, breaking records and (occasionally) my resolve to be well-behaved about being pregnant in the summer. I reach a state of zen-like acceptance about empire waists, fall in big love with a funky white blazer and can’t stop wearing a pair of nude wedge heels. Grades are released and the “let’s panic about clerkships” season begins in earnest.

July: It’s still hot! I wrap up the working part of my summer at job #2, but not before finishing some wild research involving the jurisdiction of tribal courts (seriously). Three days before I’m supposed to finish working, at 32.5 weeks pregnant, I get in a car accident coming home from work and D., mom and I spend a long night watching a fetal monitor in L&D. Thankfully, everything’s fine, beginning a long series of calamitous events (including, to wit, an earthquake, a hurricane, a flood and multiple 24+ hour power outages in 90 degree weather) that fail to shake baby m. loose from her cozy uterine hiding place. I start making lists of everything that needs to be done before the baby is born, and kind of freak out a little.

August: We take an impulsive, last-minute trip to North Carolina for A2. and A3.’s wedding, relishing the opportunity to celebrate with friends and family. On the way back, we spend the night at an inn in Durham that seems like it might be a cross between Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Psycho. I turn 27, wearing a dress also worn by Emily Deschanel on the Bones set (squeee!). We celebrate hitting the 36 week mark by walking 7 miles, and I feel like a superhero. Despite hopes of an August 1 move date, D.’s start-up is still based in our house, meaning I get to be 8217432987 years pregnant . . . with an audience!

September: We wait. And wait. I celebrate my last first day of school, to the hilarious tune of people who didn’t realize I was pregnant last spring audibly gasping when I walk into meetings. I finally find some pants. The baby locks and loads herself into my pelvis such that I can’t sit or lie down comfortably, and then stays put. I go to doctor’s appointment after doctor’s appointment where my OB swears I’m having the baby this week, but despite some significant progress, “active labor” never materializes. Less than 100 hours before my due date, I interview for a Very Important Appellate Clerkship, and (admittedly) fall slightly to pieces about not getting it (it’s okay. Journey, destination, etc.). As my due date comes and goes sans baby, I try to find some humor in wearing my first-trimester skinny jeans. And even though at the time, I swore I didn’t really look that big, did I? I . . . did. Finally, after 4.5 weeks of prodromal labor and more than 40 weeks of pregnancy, I sigh with relief (and some trepidation) when my OB says it’s time to induce, and baby m. enters the world on September 23, 2011. After a week, we leave the house as a family, with a whole new set of challenges. D.’s start-up gets some office new office space, leaving us alone in our house for the first time in more than a year.

October: Two weeks after M. is born, I go back to school, where one of my classmates hilariously asks where I’ve been the past two weeks. My mother-in-law watches M. while I’m in school, and we struggle to figure out nursing, pumping, and sleeping in a way that produces maximum family sanity. I get the baby blues but don’t have time to think about it (not a strategy I recommend). I meet some great mom friends, online and off. I’m tired.

November: I’m still tired, but it gets better. I cave and buy myself some mom jeans, and feel much better for it. I start belting again, and discover the miracle of a boxy sweater-jacket. I test the limits of winterizing summer favorites and extending maternity wear into my post-maternity life. The idea of the end of the semester starts to wear on me. M. starts to smile for real, and we celebrate the best Thanksgiving ever, visiting with family and welcoming yet another baby cousin. I finally start to feel a little better, until I mess up my back over the holiday weekend (which turns out to be not a huge deal, thankfully). M. starts a nanny share with another family, and we breathe a sigh of relief as the arrangement seems to work out. Finally, after eight weeks, breastfeeding starts to seem manageable, and I’m glad we stuck it out.

December: The semester finally hurtles to a conclusion. I spend a week at home alone with M. while D. is on a business trip the first week of finals. We breathe a huge sigh of relief when the semester ends, in a bit of a state of disbelief that the stars have aligned for us to get through it in one piece. I spend a few days at home with nothing on my to-do list. I meet up with Amy, Tania and M. of An Epic Battle in High Heels. We celebrate the holidays with family and a napless but beloved infant. Before we can believe it, it’s 2012, a year that seemed like it might never come.

Like what you just read? You can subscribe to Narrowly Tailored via RSS or bloglovin’, or follow me on Twitter to be the first to know what I’m up to.