Disclaimer: My oldest is a teenager. I bought maternity garments when only the old styles were available. Newer styles started coming out in 2016, but not early enough for me to try any of them. I’ve hesitated to write this post because I know that change has happened (and I really appreciate that!) But also: even if the new style of garments are great, the children who have gestated within them aren’t even old enough to be baptized yet. Why did it take so long to have better options?
I still remember quite a bit from going shopping for maternity clothes: driving with my husband to the Motherhood Maternity at the outlet mall, figuring out that Target had the best local selection of nursing bras, and going to Kohl’s where I decided that I would be okay with looking like a bright pink zebra because the shirt was super comfy and could easily be altered to work with garments.
I fell in love with maternity pants. I was delighted at how easy it was to find pants with functional pockets. (This was the era of chapstick depth pockets, if there were pockets at all.) Maternity pants were even cut loose enough through the legs for easy movement! (Jeggings were just becoming popular, and most women’s pants were tight through the thighs.) Maternity clothes were practical. Then I realized that the fashion industry knew how to make practical clothes for women. My excitement turned to indignation. They knew tight jeans are restrictive. They knew fake/tiny pockets are limiting. They knew, and so many women bought tight, constricting pants because it was nearly impossible to buy anything else. I was frustrated with the fashion industry because they clearly knew how to make practical clothing for women, they just chose not to, unless you were expecting.
My frustrations with garments were different. Garment design indicated that the church did NOT know how pregnancy affects women’s bodies. I had heard countless talks and lessons encouraging women to have children, so I expected maternity garments to anticipate a pregnant person’s needs. Mormon women have born so many babies in the last century and a half that surely the patterns should be nearly perfected! I was so disappointed. I didn’t have sisters or close friends who were young mothers to talk about garments with, and I didn’t live near a distribution center, so I used the size recommendations off the website. It told me to order maternity and nursing garments in the same size that I usually wore, so I did. During my first pregnancy, I gained weight exactly as recommended and lost it all within a year of birth. I feel self conscious saying that because I know so many women struggle with baby weight, but it’s important context. My textbook weight gain (and loss) should have given me the best-case experience with maternity garments. Nevertheless:
1) I outgrew the bottoms by the end of the second trimester. I ended up pushing the waist under my belly and having everything sag.
2) The neckline of the maternity garments (only available in the old chemise style) was too high for the vast majority of maternity tops, and it was too high for me to nurse in. Like many pregnant women, my nipples were tender. I had to use my bra to hold the neckline of the garment under my shirt. This was physically painful.
3) The nursing tops were not designed for a post-partum body. For the first several months (at least six) the bottom of the unhemmed shirt would roll up to my natural waistline because I still had a soft belly. That roll was obnoxious, uncomfortable, and unnecessary. A real hem and a slightly more generous cut through the belly would have made a huge difference in my comfort.
It boggles my mind that I put up with all that unnecessary discomfort for two pregnancies. For my third, I tried special ordering a top that would work for pregnancy and early post-partum. A long story short: what they sent me was several inches wider than my most muumuu-like maternity shirt.
I happened to vacation near a distribution center right when I was starting to need maternity shirts. The lady there said many pregnant women wore the regular lower-cut non-maternity garment tops, just a few sizes bigger. That’s right. The regular garments worked better for pregnant women than garments supposedly designed for maternity. It definitely worked better for me. I didn’t gain much weight with that baby, so I don’t know how well it would have worked for most women in the third trimester.
When I could find maternity clothes in my size, they were usually pretty good: comfortable, practical, stylish enough. Maternity garments were awful. After cutting up the nearly-new fabric of my maternity bottoms, I wrote: “My heart is broken because we champion motherhood so much in the church, but the church shows so little understanding about the intimate details of how a woman and her needs actually change with motherhood.”
The new maternity and nursing garment styles came out too late for me to try them. It seems like they would be better. What has your experience been? (Bonus points if you’ve tried both styles!) Are there any improvements you would like? Fashions have changed too. How do garments work with your maternity clothes? Are the feelings you’ve had about maternity clothes and maternity garments the same or different?
(This post continues a conversation about church dress codes and fashion. Part 1 talks about my experience transitioning to garments and women’s clothing. Part 3 discusses swimwear and church cultural expectations. Additionally, the posts How hard is it to find a garment-friendly dress? and How hard is it to find garment-unfriendly men’s business wear? discuss how fashion creates disparate garment-wearing experiences for women and men. This post also relates to mother’s issues, like inadequate nursing rooms, which often go unseen because women are not in decision making positions.)
15 Responses
Thanks for sharing this. I have never had children, but wear the nursing tops because they worked best for me. We need to do better with garments that work with women’s bodies during all stages of life.
I am a slim person who has HUGE babies and a huge pregnant belly. I also have teens and was limited to the one maternity style. By the end of each pregnancy, I wore my husband’s garment bottoms because the maternity garments cut into my sides (literally, blood) and slid that horrible panel down to my knees. But oh how I loved the wide, stretchy elastic waistline of my husband’s garments! That thick, soft fabric and that thick waistband that didn’t cut me! I often wondered why the women’s waistband was thin elastic, like a hair band – perfect for slicing into her sides as she grows – and the men’s were made with comfortable, wide elastic. . .???
I had nursing babies before and after the changes in nursing garments. The old nursing garments were 100% ridiculous. The new ones are great. They don’t have those stupid holes that the old nursing garments had with the bunched up fabric and super high necklines. In fact, I’m no longer nursing, but I still wear the nursing tops because they’re more comfortable. They’re super low cut: they are pretty much in line with my bra, so I can wear any shirts and never have to worry about the neckline anymore.
PS- I have no memory of pregnancy garments during my last pregnancy (and my baby is only 3!). So, that’s why I have no comment on the garments for pregnancy… only the nursing ones 🤣
Maybe I’ll remember tomorrow or something
No memory of them actually sounds pretty promising!
I’m new to this website. I want to make comments on past posts, but I don’t know if it’ll be worth it or ever be seen. I also don’t know if there’s a good post that talks about what men really mean when they say things like, “I’m okay with women getting the preisthood, but I’ll have to completely rethink the purpose of the preisthood” (say what?) Or “It would be a slap in the face if women were allowed to hold their baby during the baby blessing because this is an important moment in fatherhood,” (huh, wait a sec) “Because so many women want to hold their babies during the baby blessing, we are going to ask them to stand and acknowledge them so they can feel like they have some authority in this special moment” (this isn’t an ordain women request they’re making bishop, they’re just being normal moms) and “No more paying your fast offerings online people or putting away chairs for them or we might lose the young men” (something’s wrong here). And finally, the whopper, “Looks like they took out that covenant that women need to obey their husbands, well that’s not God’s choice, that’s just the church caving.” (that one hurt) Men say women say mysterious things, but I’d love it if I knew what men were trying to say about these things relating to family life and priesthood. Maybe there’s a good post someone can refer me to?
I’m not normally outspoken about this stuff because I’m so bad with words I know I might accidently cross the lines, but I won’t be silent about this incident…
“No we’re not going to have a consistent nursery worker or allow you in there, you and the workers all need breaks from kids that’s why they only serve one sunday a month and I release them every six months” This is from when I begged my bishop to allow my child some stability in nursery because he was being hurt by inconsistent caregivers who didn’t fully bond with and pay attention to the children leading to my child getting bullied by other kids and videos on (I witnessed him in someone’s lap watching a violent video from early church history in nursery on a tablet), and the leaders using that time to do something else (they were so busy adjusting to their new calling all the time that once we had to call on a manhunt because my child was allowed to escape and wander the streets), he was also afraid of men–he almost always called men and there were no female figures to bond to. Input is more urgent than trading off with women being in charge (besides, my primary presidency backed him up, and I’ve had some awful women leaders in other situations as well). I’m not part of the ordain women movement–I just want to talk, give us a powerful way to advocate for our children, survey us, something, so leadership knows what’s going on instead of always being told they already know. I once advocated for a better visiting teaching situation when I was in a low situation and my Relief Society leaders were so pleased, they quoted how good revelation relies on good information (I think that was a President Nelson quote), and said this is what they needed more of. I also realized that I would have been spared some bad situations if I had listened to the Spirit tell me that I needed to turn down some callings.
I’ve heard the idea of good revelation coming from good information for a couple of decades, and I appreciate that framing. I can’t expect leaders to make good decisions that affect me, if I’m not willing to talk about my experiences.
I used both the old and the new maternity garments. As for the tops, at the time I used them, the bust came in one size. I am fairly large busted normally. I swear I had watermelons on my chest while nursing. And yet, the cups on the garments were too big. It was as if they’re made them one size fits all and in order to do that, they maxed out the cup size. So, I was swimming in extra fabric tucked into my nursing bra. And I’ve never seen a less flattering shirt (cuz technically it’s a shirt) in my life. The opening was just a slice across the top of the breast.
The new ones criss cross across the bust. They were much more comfortable and attractive. They only came out for my last (of four) children. Despite being more comfortable to me, I’m sure that is not a universal feeling. Making things with one cup size for women is just silly. Swimsuits come, usually, in one cup size. But if you don’t like it, you try a different brand or store. There are a few different cuts and fabrics, but it’s essentially no variety.
Yeah, the old nursing tops only came in like a DD cup. I was barely a B cup when nursing, but I didn’t super mind the extra fabric because I was so leaky. I’d leak through the breast pads, and all that wadded up garment cup, and my padded bra, and my shirt. Pretty much I was just wet and sticky for a year.
I’m realizing that to have meaningful conversations about our garment wearing experiences, we need a pictographic chronology of the changes. I’m losing track and have no idea what garment eras I’ve fallen into.
My babies were born in the 2010s and, because of the shaped cups, the maternity tops stayed in rotation even after the pregnancies because they shaped to my bra and I liked that component. I buy g cup bra sizes, which must be what those nursing tops are aiming for, because they fit pretty accurately.
However! They were absolutely an added nuisance with my exclusive breastfed baby (her choice, not mine). I wasn’t financially in a position then to tailor a wardrobe to baby feeding (there’s great options out there now!), so that extra layer under less than ideal clothes always made it more of a production than it needed to be.
I gave birth to my oldest before they made changes to the nursing garments, and I remember crying out of frustration as a new mom because it seemed impossibly hard to figure out how to breastfeed my baby while also navigating so many impossibly uncomfortable and bulky layers of clothing. It was a painful and uncomfortable and frustrating experience every two hours when my baby wanted to eat, and I was on the verge of just giving up and feeding her formula instead. But I’m the midst of it all I had a moment of clarity where the thought came into my head, “Heavenly Father cares more that your baby is fed than what clothes you are wearing.” I took off the ridiculous garment layer and switched to some nursing tank tops that same day and never looked back. I had five more kids and even after they improved the nursing garments so they weren’t an utter disaster, I still never wore garment tops while I had a nursing baby. I figured if God or the church leaders cared that much that women wear them all the time, even while pregnant or breastfeeding, then they could care enough to make it feasible to do so.
Nursing with layers of clothing is tricky, and tricky is not good when you have a squirmy wailing baby. By my third I finally just pushed all the layers down all the time and never bothered with a cover. Maybe a burp cloth over my breast if I wanted to be a bit more discreet. So much easier.
While I was pregnant and everything hurt I swapped my garment bottoms for normal low rise underwear & avoided waistbands whenever possible – nightshirts & rompers were a solid comfort > fashion choice! Same for tops while breastfeeding. I’m admittedly obstinate but I felt sacrificing my body & health for my baby was doing a lot for the kingdom of God so He can take what I offer & hopefully Heavenly Mother will vouch for me 🙂
I also had a distribution employee tell me to get regular garment tops and bottoms in larger sizes for my pregnancy. It never occurred to me until now how ridiculous it is that the maternity garments were so poorly cut that even their employees wouldn’t recommend them.
It wasn’t just me then! It is very ridiculous. I have known zero women who have chosen it forgo maternity clothes and just buy larger regular clothes. Why would we think to do that for underwear?