Mamacita: Wearing Maternity with Style

Muumuus, caftans, potato sacks: dressing for pregnancy was a lot easier back when you didn’t have as many choices. This is one area of the “modern girl’s life,” that’s chronicled so endlessly in chick lit and self-help sections at the local reading megaplex, that I could frankly do without. Am I grateful that some designers have thoughtfully remembered the expectant mom as both a consumer and an arbiter of taste? Yes. And it’s true that maternity clothes are much cuter now. But honestly, the pressure to look like Denise Richards in a strappy gown during her eighth month can be as overwhelming as the thought of impending motherhood.

Back in my 20s, when I worked on staff at various fashion magazines, my pregnant bosses would have small elastic V-shaped panels sewn into the sides of their slim Gucci pants for pregnancy and removed immediately post-partum, when they snapped back to their pre-baby form (with a little help from Pilates and cigarettes) in mere weeks. That was when Liz Lange’s maternity business was still in its infant stage, and a boxy black button-down from the mall-chain maternity store was the best a chic mommy could hope for. An acquaintance of mine, whose father was as short as she was and as round in the belly, borrowed his custom-made dress shirts in her later months and wore them with leggings. Not my thing but it worked for her.

Now that I’m pregnant (with twins, no less) and the gap between the bottom of my shirt and the top of my pants is widening by the day, I’m realizing how having too many options isn’t necessarily a good thing. It’s like the ballot of a presidential primary, or a diner menu. More doesn’t mean better.

Here’s what I’ve found to be the best strategies for a fashionable (but not ridiculously so) pregnancy:

1. Buy larger sizes to stretch over that protrusion for the duration of gestation: Anyone who darts off to the mall maternity store at the first glimpse of a double pink line is in for a long ten months (Who knows where the nine came from? Pregnancy lasts for