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Today's guest post is from Jenny Hamilton, who is a senior in-house lawyer at a Fortune 500 company and the mother to a 5 month-old little girl. Jenny explores the world of fashion, dressing for the corporate world, and motherhood daily at JennyHamiltonStyle.com.
Just as you don't pack on the baby weight overnight, once you have your baby, your body is going to go through another major change – this time in reverse! So how do you make the transition and dress professionally after maternity leave?
{related: what to wear to work after maternity leave}
Here are five easy tips:
1. Large, open cardigans make excellent transition pieces because they can double as a comfy jacket for the office and they can be worn during maternity leave with a pair of soft leggings.
Update: Some of our other favorite cardigans for lounging as of 2021 include this Zella wrap and this circle cardigan — we've rounded up more below!
2. Invest in long, fun print scarves that you can tie high above the baby belly to give you shape (in the form of an empire waist) during the pregnancy, and you can wear it long and loose around your neck to hide the post-baby bloat.
Stay tuned for some of our latest favorite scarves!
3. Stretchy knit skirts, like this one from Isabella Oliver, transition from maternity to post-baby beautifully.
4. Another key piece is a soft, knit wrap dress that can grow (and shrink) with you. You can wear a cardi or jacket over for work, and remove and add oversized earrings for a night out.
As of 2024, some of our favorite wrap dresses for work include the classic DVF* (also look on resale sites!), Kiyonna*, Modern Citizen, Quince*, Reiss and Amazon Essentials* — also check out this faux wrap dress from Karen Kane*. (*also available in plus sizes*)
Recent wrap dresses we've featured (as of 10/24) include some of these great dresses, below:
5, Finally, here's what NOT to buy: shoes of any sort except flats or wedges with good supports that can accommodate swelling towards the end of pregnancy. Your weight could cause your arches to fall and flatten (and enlarge) your feet post-baby, so take a vacation from heavy shoe shopping.
Readers, what are your best tips for how to dress professionally after maternity leave? What were your biggest struggles and challenges?
ClerkChic
I’m starting to think Kat has some big news…
c
I thought the exact same thing! ;)
AN
Me too!!
S
I was just thinking that there has been quite a few pregnancy posts lately! So much so that I actually found myself paying special attention to the pregnant women at court today. Is she wearing an empire shirt? Flat shoes? What kind of jacket? And I am nowhere near having a baby!!
RKS
I will add one more consideration: will you be pumping breastmilk for your baby? If so, this will affect your attire. Dresses are a huge PITA while pumping. So are snug-fitting tops, unless they button down. While I didn’t need nursing work attire, putting a few nursing pieces into rotation did make things easier, particularly when I was out and about during the day. Oh the places in which I pumped … :-)
Pumping is also something to think about before returning to work. Will you need any accomodations? Do you have a private place to pump? If you have an office that’s private enough, you’ll need a lock installed so no one would barge in on you. Is there a fridge where you can keep your stash?
And yes, it absolutely can be done. I nursed until 14 and 24 months with my kids, pumping at work for long stretches. There is absolutely no reason to preemptively wean before going back to work, unless that’s your personal choice or you really, truly know in your circumstances, you won’t be able to make it work.
E
Totally agree with RKS. I pumped for 9 months as a surgery resident; it was hard but worth it to me personally. On a very superficial level, I returned to pre-baby size within 3 months of delivery, and breast feeding was a part of that. For pumping, I would wear those shirts that everyone complains about — the boxy silk ones from Banana that have no shape. They were easy to pull up to pump and then even sort of floated down over the pump to cover a little bit. I didn’t ever wear a dress for that reason. You should also have an extra shirt, I spilled milk once or twice and was glad for the extra clothing — too embarrassing to explain!
AC
Great advice! I would only add that laundering should also be in the forefront of your mind when picking out the clothes for your return to work post-baby. Not so much for the leakage issues, breast pads should eliminate that problem (I liked Lansinol), but babies tend to produce a lot of secretions from both ends. Unless you want to deal with a huge dry-cleaning bill, try to stick to things that you can hand wash or throw in the machine.
RKS
EXACTLY. One of my favorite working-mom memories: I decided that I should try to dress nicer one day, for my BigLaw job. Put on dry clean only pants, nice silk top … and my 18 +/- mo son ran up to me and smeared me with yogurt and G-d knows what else before I even made it out the door. Back to machine washables I went! :-) I’m now trying to dress up my wardrobe since the kids are older (8, 7 and 4) and less likely to smear me with goop in the morning.
Jenny
Great!!! Something to look forward to! LOL
Lobbyist
And I would add, don’t entirely give up and buy a whole wardrobe of clothes in your new bigger size. I got this advice from other pregnant working Moms, to stretch your pregnancy clothes as far as they would go post-pregnancy and just to keep working to get back to your old size. By the way, it took me 9 months with 1 pregnancy and 12 with the second to get back!
KatyEsq
Thanks for giving me some hope today! Some days I feel like I will never get back to anything resembling my pre-baby size. My son is 4 1/2 months now and I am right at that in between stage where I can’t quite button pre-baby pants, but one size up is too big! It’s so frustrating!! And I only have 7 lbs to go, but all my weight seems to have gone right to my stomach.
Emilie
That stage lasted over a year for me. :-( Next size up would slouch in the bottom and everywhere else – so frustrating. Weight Watchers finally took the rest of it off.
GingerB
A lot of times you’ll get back into the clothes you could wear at 3-5 months pretty quickly. When you start growing out of your regular clothes give some thought to some slightly bigger outfits you can pull back out in your first months back post-baby. Neutrals and lightweight fabrics can do for the early pre-baby/post-baby seasons with strategic assessory changes.
Suit skirts with button waists that can be extended are good and as you return to normal size you can move the buttons over.
Liz
Wow. Pregnancy just seems so inconvenient. I know it’s supposed to be this wonderful, empowering thing, but it doesn’t seem that way.
Jenny
It is inconvenient, believe me, particularly when you are still traveling for work and you’re hauling around a suitcase when you’re eight months pregnant. And I am still pumping (hence the love of cardigans and v-necks), and that can disrupt your day. Try sneaking a pumping session in the air between two seat mates! (If you are interested, see my post this morning at http://jennyhamiltonstyle.com.) But it is a very fulfilling challenge. By the way, as I am writing this, a commercial for the perfect fit button is on – in response to the comment about managing your wardrobe while getting back to pre-pregnancy size. I haven’t tried it, but I might – I still have 10 pounds to go!
RR
It is! I HATED being pregnant, with a passion. I know you are supposed to love it and glow and all that jazz, but I hated it. I swelled. I had aches everywhere. I got round ligament pain that stopped me in my tracks. And by the end I couldn’t walk for more than 10 minutes without having to stop and sit down.
But, I love being a mom! Even a frazzled working mom.
Emilie
I look at it as a means to an end (the end being a kid, of course). I look at the newborn stage that way as well (I’m not big on babies). :-)
LakeSide
I wholeheartedly agree :-) It kind of sucks, actually, and I’m only 9 weeks in and am not having any kinds of severe symptoms.
RKS
Yes, it is inconvenient. But you do get something pretty awesome out of the whole deal. :-)
Think of it like bar review, with the exam being delivery. You slog through an intense period that can be stressful, then have a rough 1-2 days at the end. But it’s the means to the end, and you want that end result. So you do it.
LakeSide
Right, and then you can drink to celebrate. Ha ha, just kidding (mostly).
Anonymous
Actually, its the working thats pretty inconvenient while pregnant. lol.
cbackson
Aaaaaaand this is part of why I don’t have kids yet. I say “yet”, because I know I might change my mind. But currently, I’m not interested enough in children to feel like pregnancy is worth it.
Yasmin
I’ve got 10 days to go till my due date (am luckily already on maternity leave, yay for not living in the US! haha) and am starting to think about this kind of thing – super helpful post, thanks!
At over 30 I keep telling myself “9 months up, 9 months down” – but I know that I will be really unhappy if the weight doesn’t leave quickly…weight watchers here I come! I want to start buying cute clothes again…Instead I finally broke down and got some crocs…ugly!! but so comfortable…
Legally Brunette
GOOD LUCK Yasmin! Best wishes for a healthy pregnancy.