Don’t waste your money on fancy breast feeding clothes

Let’s start with the sad news that you will need breastfeeding bras. Sorry. I know they are ugly, like really ugly and cost a fortune.

My advice is to buy them when they are on offer. Personally I figured that last season’s feeding bras were as ugly as the new season and therefore I would be better waiting for a sale and buying them then.

I managed to get all of my feeding bras the second time around for half of the original price. At least that way you don’t feel as bad wearing ugly bras knowing that you have saved a bit of money that you can use to buy pretty things with instead. Buying them online in a sale is also best as you will stand a much better chance of finding your size. If you sign up for email notifications to the stores that you would purchase them in, you often get to shop the sale online before general release to the public.

The good news is that from my experience I found that expensive breast feeding clothes were a waste of money. Hooray.

I once ‘treated’ myself to a fancy breast feeding dress. This was due to the fact that the first time around I really missed not being able to wear a dress. So early on, in my second pregnancy I found a dress that claimed it would work as maternity wear and grow with my bump and then look really good once baby was here and allow me access to my boobs for feeding. Obviously this was going to be a hero dress. One that I would wear over and over again which would mean the cost per wear would bring the price right down and therefore instead of being expensive was actually a bargain!

Well, although it was a v neck sleeveless dress it was made of a rather heavy almost furry fabric. Think inside of jogging bottom material. Unfortunately as my baby was born in September I spent all of the summer months very heavily pregnant and therefore hot. Understandably the dress that I would get lots of wear from wasn’t going to be worn in the summer which is when I had planned to wear it. Never mind I would definitely get my money’s worth once baby was here.

I excitedly wore my dress when my baby was about 2 weeks old. I had gone out to a café with my mum. I picked up my baby and tried tucking her under the dress, it had a flap section, but she was too big. Then I tried pulling the dress aside but I couldn’t get enough of my boob out so that she could access my nipple. After ten minutes of trying various ways to get my baby to my boob through the dress and nearly dropping her in the process I reached for my feeding scarf and took the top part of the dress off and fed her as normal. Disappointed when I got home I tried again without the baby. Try as I might I couldn’t get the flaps to move far enough apart to comfortably reveal my nipples. The only way I could get access to them was by basically getting my whole chest area out. Funnily enough I quit with the dress and didn’t wear it again.

So what should you wear?

A cheap vest top underneath any top are the best clothes to feed in. When it was feeding time I would pull down my vest top on one side (below my boob) undo my bra to reveal my boob and then with the baby in hand lift up the outer top and attach baby for a feed.

Everyone is different on how much of their body they want on display when feeding, it is a personal choice. For me I felt most comfortable when having my belly covered as I wasn’t happy with the tone, texture and stretch marks and didn’t want to have my belly exposed. I also preferred to have the top section of my body covered. By using two tops in this way the only part of my body that needed to be revealed was my nipple and a bit of boob around the nipple.

By using a cheap vest top in this way I was able to use all of the tops I already owned pre pregnancy and didn’t need to spend any money on feeding clothes.

I personally also liked to use a feeding scarf when feeding in public. For me, I found that with both of my babies, having a scarf in a busy environment enabled them to concentrate and get on with feeding instead of being distracted and looking all around.

However by the time they were 4 or 5 months and definitely by the time they were 6 months they used to like playing peekaboo and lifting up the scarf to expose me when I least expected it. Which to be honest was quite funny really.

#breastfeeding #feedingclothes #breastfeedingclothes #mummyclothes #baby