Before I got pregnant, I swore that I wouldn’t buy special clothes for pregnancy and postpartum. After all, it was only a short season of my life, why should I spend the money on that? Then, I realized that this was the only time in my life I could truly, shamelessly, shop the pregnant lady section of the internet and stores and thought I should take advantage of that. On top of that, I realized that postpartum life had its own special needs, and my go-to wardrobe staples of knit pullover shirts and blouses just didn’t quite fit those needs anymore. Namely, I wanted to pump at work without having to completely undress and take my top off and sit half naked in a room where I may or may not get inadvertently walked in on. My workplace does not have a dedicated pump space, so, yay! After a bit of trial and error, I got my perfect formula down for dressing for work while pumping for baby.

I used to always sleep in a T-shirt or nightgown, and this was more than adequate well into third trimester. After a certain point though, the belly was just too big for the T-shirt to comfortably fit over. I also realized that I would need something with nursing access, as I figured I’d be nursing the baby all day and all night long. I needed it to be still ultra comfortable, hopefully stylish, and I didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg!

By now, it’s a bit of a cliche to say that the postpartum period is seriously not discussed enough. But it’s still true. We get all prepared for the baby with the nursery and the clothing and even the pump, but nobody talks about what the mom really needs to get through those early weeks. I had almost daily deliveries from Amazon after baby boy arrived, because I kept discovering things I needed and wanted to help me recover. Here is my list of the most useful things I found for recovering from (a vaginal) birth.