You've gone and had a baby and now none of your clothes fit...

I'm sure your birth class, know-it-all friend, and every third pregnancy website you visited gleefully told you that you will still look pregnant when you leave the hospital and that you should be sure to pack some maternity clothes.

"No problem!", you naively thought "I can stand to wear my cute maternity dresses for an extra couple of weeks".

Then, suddenly you were 11 weeks postpartum, crying on your bedroom floor, surrounded by your pre-pregnancy clothes (none of which fit) wondering what on earth you were going to wear to the office next week.  Whether you lost your your baby weight by then (all together now... hahahahah) or like me, were still 10lbs+ over what you were just a year ago, it's almost certain that your wardrobe is suddenly much more limited.  Why is this (other than because there is no justice and life is a bitch)?  Your skin hasn't had time to shrink back, and your bones and body have rearranged themselves ('member those birthing hips that helped carry that baby around at 40 weeks?).

So what do you do now?

Well dry your tears, chin up... here is some advice:

1. 1. Repeat after me "It took 9 months to grow a baby, it'll take at least that long to get my body back."
2. 
   
3. 2. Go order some clothes from Momzelle (or their Amazon selection).  This is a magical website that will sell you magical clothing that will have discreet openings for you to nurse your baby AND make you look amazing. The company is Canadian and so they delightfully undersell the fact that their clothing is, as they put it, "Designed to flatter the postpartum figure" (seriously, that's like saying that newborns are cute but a bit time consuming). I don't know what these people do when they design their clothes and I don't know why no one else does it, but they will seriously make you look like a person shaped person, even when you aren't yet.

And now, internet, because we've become close friends, I will tell you a not entirely appropriate story to prove my point.  This was my second pregnancy and I became pregnant at 15lbs more than I was before I had my first baby.  Then, when I was 5 months along my husband had a health crisis that
landed him in the ICU.  Needless to say, a toddler, a very ill husband (who is fine now... phew), and a heady cocktail of pregnancy hormones does not make for a calm couple of months.  And so, I made the very rational decision at that time, to eat my feelings.  And the feelings, all of the stressful, heart wrenching, "what will the future bring" feelings, they tasted like chocolate milkshakes.  I then stayed pregnant until 41 weeks, at which point I could have held my own in a seesaw contest with an Orca. Below are 2 pictures of me modeling 2 different dresses.

Me at 39 weeks wearing one of their dresses that is designed to be both a maternity and nursing dress (my daughter was decorating me with stickers)

Me 2 weeks postpartum looking like a person even though I was actually a bag of blubber

Not only will these dresses make you look great, they also have clever openings that make them super convenient for breastfeeding.  Good looking nursing clothes is so hard to find that these are worth every penny.

Also I was recently at a work event where a co-worker complemented me (completely inappropriately... seriously guys, NEVER COMMENT ON A COWORKER'S WEIGHT) for having lost all my baby weight.  Of course... hahahah, definitely had not done that, but I WAS wearing a Momzelle shirt.