For the last ten years my wardrobe consisted of office outfits – sharp suits and tailored shirts and fabulous heels, jeans and fitted tshirts for the weekends, and the odd nice dress for special occasions. It was an easy recipe, I enjoyed shopping, I knew the rules for my body shape and I knew the shops that sold the stuff that fit me well.

Then I got pregnant and discovered the world of maternity clothes. This wasn’t the end of the world – I found some decent maternity jeans and some fitted tops that accentuated my bump, and a nice dress for special occasions. It was a novelty to be showing off my new body and I knew once I had the baby I’d be able to go back to all my old favourite shops again and re-invent myself as an uber cool new mum.


THEN. I had my baby and inherited a brand new body. Whereas once I’d had a flat stomach and small boobs, I’ve suddenly transformed into a cross between a walrus and Pamela Anderson. And when you’re a Pamela Anderson-walrus cross, you can’t wear fitted tshirts, so it transpires, nor sharp suits and certainly not little strapless party dresses.

You know when you’ve been away on a trip, and you’ve been wearing the same bloody thing day in, day out, for weeks, or even months on end? And when you get home you want to burn the lot and hit the shops? That’s how it feels after you’ve given birth too… you want to throw away all the maternity stuff and start over. Except you can’t, because it’s the only stuff that still fits, and you don’t have time to go shopping for anything new. So you’re stuck in a black hole of maternity wear, except now it doesn’t look quite so cute around your mid-section. The clingy stuff makes you look like you’ve been eating burgers and drinking beer for six months straight, and the baggy stuff makes you look, well, pregnant.


I bought a pair of designer jeans at Bloomingdales in NYC last December, a label called Joe’s Jeans. At the time I’d put on a bit of weight after two solid months of having H cook for me every night, so these became my ‘fat jeans’, but I felt good in them – they were the latest style, wide-legged and slightly higher waisted than hipsters, thus preventing muffin tops and plumbers’ cracks. I loved these jeans. I brought them back to Oz with me (the rest of my designer jeans collection is stuffed into a box somewhere). I put them on last week. They fit. (Well, I think they fit – when I proudly lifted my shirt and showed H that I was wearing “proper jeans” he gasped and asked me if they were hurting).

But this is what happens to your designer jeans when you have a small child in your care:

And no, sadly, napisan is not the solution to all of life’s laundry dilemmas.

So actually, the first point I want to make is that there’s not a whole lot of point in spending your non-existent income on new jeans.

The second one is that there’s no point spending it on nice tops or dresses either, because you have to breastfeed, and if you can’t do the unclip/slide-across/discreet- lift thing, you will essentially have to get undressed in public. This isn’t very dignified, even if you do have a breastfeeding shawl (this just seems to draw even more attention to you as you sweat and struggle to reposition, reattach and pick your baby up and burp him or her midway through the feed).

H was a groomsman at his best friend’s wedding two weekends ago, and I attended the ceremony with baby A. I didn’t want to wear breastfeeding clothes, so I wore a regular dress (it took me ten minutes to make the purchasing decision – something I never could have foreseen myself doing when I was baby-free). Luckily baby A slept through the service and even allowed me to mingle with the congregation afterwards, introducing her to her father’s friends for the first time.

However, I tried to stop off for a Subway on the way home and she wasn’t quite so gracious – howling her lungs out and scrambling around my bodice, sucking through the grey silk and chiffon, and leaving two milky spittle rings in strategic spots on my lovely new dress. I had to let her scream throughout the ordeal (I couldn’t just strip off in the middle of Subway could I?), then speed home and rip my dress off so she could eat. Needless to say, she wasn’t impressed. Babies don’t give a hoot whether you need to step out in a glamorous outfit to improve your self-esteem and hide your walrus-shaped body. Babies have no respect or patience for designer threads either. When we got home I discovered she’d done such a thorough job of soiling her own Sunday best that I had to put her in the shower with me.

Basically I think this means I am resigned to 12 months of wearing unflattering breastfeeding clothes. After which time I'll probably be pregnant again and ready to get out the ugly old maternity wardrobe. And then the breastfeeding one after that. Perhaps in 2012 I'll be able to go shopping again. For real clothes.