A Personal Nursing Story by Irina Bond
When I got pregnant, I had to relearn how to dress a growing belly (and hips and breasts and basically everything else). Then, after I had my baby and was no longer pregnant, I had to yet again relearn how to dress for a now-deflated belly and cantaloupe-sized breasts that needed to be out and about every 30 minutes to an hour. I remember googling how to dress while breastfeeding many times, only to be kind of disappointed in my search results; lots of hands-on experience was what helped me out eventually.
I started out with actual nursing tops, which were incredibly helpful as a no-fuss option when I didn’t have time to think about what to wear. Later on, though, as my confidence grew, I figured out ways to keep wearing things in my existing wardrobe so that I could start feeling a little more like the old me (well, I’ll never be the old me since becoming a mother, but I like to think of myself as a better version of my non-mothering self, ha ha). Plus, I only had a handful of nursing tops, and laundry was barely ever getting done in those first weeks, so "my special tops" weren’t always clean and available.
I began looking at my wardrobe through “breastfeeding lenses,”—analyzing what would work for my new responsibility. There are a few key ways you can easily provide access to breastfeed: unbutton, unzip, pull down, or lift up. Here are some examples of nursing-friendly styles (to varying degrees) you may already have in your closet—button ups, zippers, stretchy fabrics, wraps or official nursing styles.
Click on any image below to shop #EASYACCESS style!
