Last month, we had a wedding reception to go to. Normally, I have a fairly standard outfit for all weddings, but in this case, it was a second reception for friends of ours who love to dance. That meant that my usual dress was a bit too formal and not free-flowing enough to kick up my heels if the urge took me. This got me to thinking about what sorts of outfits would actually be good for weddings when you're a new or relatively new mum.
When my brother-in-law got married the other year, E was only 2 months old. My dress for the day was lovely, but it wasn't very baby-friendly. Especially since, at 2 months old, E was still nursing pretty much constantly. In order to give him a feed, I recall having to barricade myself in a handicapped toilet for 10 minutes, setting him on the changing table to unzip my dress from the side, and then sitting on the lid of the toilet, basically half-naked, until he was finished and I could set him down to put my dress back on. Not the wisest decision I've ever made.
So, since then, I've tried to come up with baby-friendly alternatives. Granted, now that E's older, I don't need to worry so much about easy-access tops or dresses for feeding, but since some day there will be another Baby D in the house, it's still worth keeping in mind.
1) This first dress is from Monsoon (the Monsoon at Stansted Airport which was having a ginormous sale when we dropped V off to go back to Vienna. Guess who went shopping at the airport?) Really, any smart-enough shirtwaisted option would work. Yes, you have to be careful if you have a fuller bust just to make sure the buttons don't gap, but shirtwaist dresses do tend to help create a waist, so they're generally quite flattering.
2) The nice thing with a skirt & top is that if your baby is desperate to nurse, you can pop on a blanket/coat/nursing cover and just untuck yourself. Or if you're in a pinch, just make sure you wear a voluminous scarf to keep your exposure to a minimum. And if you're still working back towards something resembling your pre-pregnancy size, you can snag a pencil skirt like this one from M&S which basically has a magic slip that holds in your fat and smooths out wrinkles.
3) This last dress isn't terribly baby-friendly, but if your kid isn't at the age where they have to feed all the time, it's probably fine. At the worst, you can pair it with a bolero, unzip from the back, and sneak in a quick feed with a nursing cover.
In the end, I chose the first option, even though we were leaving E with some friends for the night. Here are a few other options I've put together on Polyvore in case you want some more inspiration.
I'll be back again in a sec with another installment of the Stylish Little Men series I've been working on!
No comments:
Post a Comment