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.

Now that I’ve been using my Elvie pumps for a longer time now, I thought I would put in some updated thoughts to my initial impressions review. In general I’m still fairly impressed overall, and the quiet and discreet aspect of the pumps becomes more and more valuable to me the more different places I try pumping.

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!

Middle-of-the-night diaper changes were a routine part of life with my baby before he learned to sleep through the night. I struggled to find a good night light that would work for this. It had to be dim enough and focused enough, and near his butt! My changing pad sits on top of my dresser and it takes up nearly the full width of it, so I didn’t have space to put anything on top of the dresser that would take up much room. After doing a lot of looking around at “changing table lights” and getting frustrated that nothing fit my needs, I found the perfect one.

This week is world breastfeeding week. I think it’s amazing that such a thing exists, because breastfeeding is hard! And breastfeeding as a working mama, which also requires so much pumping, is also really hard. There are some great deals from my favorite brands going on though this week to celebrate though, and I think breastfeeding mamas deserve all the help!