Maternity clothes are no joke – and if you live in Canada cute, affordable maternity clothes are hard to come by! The secret is to know where to look for maternity clothes and how to keep your personal style even when you’re pregnant.
I can speak from personal experience from my first pregnancy – I went a little nuts on maternity clothes, and you can bet by my 3rd baby not only were the original pregnancy clothes out of style but they were an expensive waste of money.
Shopping for maternity clothes completely depends on the mom-to-be too, so many of us live different lifestyles that require different wardrobes and in turn different maternity wardrobes.
Working Moms Maternity Clothes
If you are working in an office setting where you want to keep a professional image and be comfortable with your growing baby bump you’re going to be shopping for different clothes than a stay-at-home mama. And every working mom has a different personal style and professional commitment than the next so I highly recommend you take a look at Pinterestand find some maternity outfit inspiration – because you will not find everything you need in one maternity store!
I made the big mistake of going only into Thyme Maternity with my first pregnancy and loading up on everything there. I can honestly say the only things that have stayed since my first pregnancy are the Thyme Maternity nursing bras. The rest of my maternity clothes were either not well-made and fell apart, or they were not my style and I tried to force them to be.
With that said, I have a few places that specialize in different maternity clothes – I prefer to find my maternity jeans and pants from Old Navy, my maternity/nursing bras from Thyme Maternity, and my maternity tops from H&M. So, if you find an outfit that you like on Pinterest you can recreate it by finding the specific pieces from the best stores!
Stay-at-Home Moms Maternity Clothes
Truly, these two categories are not just for expecting “working moms” and “SAHMs” since all working moms need a few casual maternity outfits to wear and all stay-at-home moms needs a few formal maternity outfits to wear too. I hope both categories help all moms who are trying to find stylish, cute maternity clothes to show off their baby bumps!
The biggest secret to casual maternity clothes are that you don’t have to wear maternity clothes! Some of my cutest dresses that I wear while I’m pregnant are actually normal, regular clothes that I found at non-maternity stores.
I will say that there are a bunch of cute maternity stores now that offer chic maternity options but they are more expensive. For example, this gingham dress I’m wearing is from J. Crew, and I wore the same dress in the Fall when I was not pregnant and this dress was far less expensive than the maternity clothes I’ve seen floating around.
Finding affordable dresses to wear while pregnant all depends on two things:
- the fit of the dress
- sales/clearance
The fit of the dress needs to be swing, shift or empire to accommodate your growing baby bump.
If you’re like me and you’re looking for dresses that will serve you way past giving birth in quality and style, you’ll want to keep an eye out on sales/clearance sections of your favourite stores. I personally have a hay-day when Anthropologie or J. Crew have exceptional sales, and it pays off because most of the time I’m purchasing beautiful dresses that are exactly my style but are less expensive than the maternity dresses at exclusive maternity stores.
My favourite places to buy casual “maternity” dresses for summer are:
Old Navy | I love their jersey swing dresses during the summer – they are cool, and come in many cute colours and patterns.
Forever 21 Plus Size | I find the regular sizes are Forever 21 are for teenagers’ bodies… but Forever 21 offers a lot of the same articles of clothing in their plus size section, and it’s definitely worth a look! My favourites are their midi+maxi dresses.
J. Crew | I adore their dresses, they make beautiful dresses with full skirts that have plenty of room and don’t restrict your belly.
I hope all my overwhelmed moms-to-be out there found some sort of maternity outfit guidance and learned that the biggest secret to maternity clothes are that you can go outside the box of “maternity store”.
Don’t be afraid to shop around online, and take a risk! The worst thing that can happen is that it doesn’t live up to your expectations and you return it!
Be yourself, even when your body is changing daily!