August has been a blur. My intention for the top of the month was to be in a place where I could finally put my feet up, and now I’ve somehow approached the single-digit countdown to my due date. My feet are up, but just to write this out.
I would like to say that my August, the final month of my pregnancy, has been preoccupied with taking in a picture at Film Forum, dipping crisp golden fries into a combination of mayonnaise and ketchup at The Odeon, going on unhurried walks around my neighbourhood and relishing the city during this temporary lull – being generally elegant and casually glamorous, and doing elegant and casually glamorous things. Instead, I’ve been frantically cleaning and organizing every inch of our home, cooking pounds and pounds of ground beef and lentils to freeze and then giving up on all domestic goddess fantasies of cooking up a storm for postpartum ease, and accepting that I will be relying heavily on take out for some time after the baby comes.
If this is nesting, mine has resembled that of a manic headless chicken trying to make pieces that won’t stick come together, and less that of a delicate sparrow contemplating what shade of twig will complete its nest. My son is presently pushing a knee, a fist, a foot, or an elbow against my ribs. My feet just barely fit my Birkenstocks, and if I am on my feet for too long or off my feet for too long and adjust to do the opposite, I get pins and needles. I have just recovered from a bout of pain in my piriformis – a literal pain in the butt – and have mainly been hobbling to weekly sonograms and doctor’s appointments, a recent visit during which my rectum was swabbed with a cotton bud. Delightful!
Some of you may be thinking, my god, this woman complains constantly about being pregnant, and if so, I’m glad. In the lead up to and throughout my pregnancy, I have thought a lot about what it all entails, and have primarily felt enraged by the ignorant manner in which conception and childbirth are approached. First, there was the cold shock of infertility, and how even as an ok-intelligent person, I had taken conceiving entirely for granted, never imagining I would be one of those people whose stories were rarely told. Then, when I became pregnant, there was the purgatory of the first trimester, where I was not sick enough to require urgent medical attention, and yet so sick that I was rendered debilitated and bound to my bed, and how unhappy I felt during what I thought was supposed to be a blissful time.
In both these moments, I felt intense shame and was revulsed by my weakness, until I discovered that what had happened and was happening to me was not terribly uncommon, but that these very real experiences were shrouded by stigma, with too many people more than eager to uphold the myth of what it takes to be a mother. To speak of indelicate matters such as how life comes into being and the trials endured in a frank and honest way, even in privacy, continues to be taboo. Superstition and shame binds us to silent suffering. As a South Asian woman, I found the isolation to be more pronounced: whenever I would come across stories about how very hard having a child could be, rarely was its author someone I could identify with culturally. To speak about the negative aspects that may arise while trying to conceive, or during pregnancy and childbirth is still treated as terribly unbecoming.
This isn’t to say that there haven’t been many wonderful moments during my pregnancy; there have been. The call bearing good news; the first heartbeat; every subsequent heartbeat since; feeling content with the changes my body has undergone for the first time in nearly twenty-five years; the time it seemed like our son had given us a thumbs up after his privates were identified during the anatomy scan; the first and best holiday my husband and I had taken where we allowed ourselves to truly enjoy ourselves; purchasing tiny outfits; purchasing not-so-tiny outfits when realizing our son may not be so tiny; delighting in my own outfits.
I could go on, but I find that in the realm of most things motherhood, there is an insistence that everything is beautiful, curated, and turbulence free. I myself am partial to a satisfying round-up of outfits to flex one of my few skills (please see below). And while there are those who do have relatively smooth befores, durings, and afters, there are a great many of us who struggle through one or all of these stages. If you tallied those numbers, we would be closer to the norm, not the exception.
In my complaining, or put gently, laying out my truths for the past year or so, I hope it’s possible to see that things can be terribly bad and terrifically good, often at the same time. That, I think, is just the experience of being, and one’s sorrows and hardships are just as significant as one’s joys. Nuance is what distinguishes us, and there is nothing I find quite so boring as the replication of one-dimensionality. Bringing life into this world is a hugely messy affair – I have been strictly instructed not to wear my Simone Rocha Crocs to the hospital when the time comes to deliver for that reason alone – so why should we feel the need to portray all that surrounds it as so neat and restrained?
If you’ve made it this far, my sincerest apologies, but now we’ll get into the fun stuff, i.e. Fashion!
A kindness I granted myself during my second and third trimesters was to store away clothes the moment they’d reached their limit, as well as clothes I knew would not fit for some time in the postpartum period unless I was intent on punishing myself. It was important to me that I hold on to the kinder feelings I have been feeling regarding my body for as long as I can, and more than half a lifetime of body dysmorphia was punishing enough. My closet is now divided into two parts, with one side containing clothes I can comfortably wear until the very second I give birth – worry not, I shan’t be wearing my lovely pieces during the actual act of giving birth – and on the other side hangs clothes I wore at the end of the second and halfway into the third trimesters. Even this small act has helped me prioritize focusing on being healthy (mentally and physically), as well as being unimaginably kind to myself postpartum, and not on the dreaded bounce back.
With all the swelling and pains of pregnancy, comfort has been crucial, though it can be synonymous with boredom. It’s been wonderful to learn how to adapt comfort to feel more like myself for now and time to come. Not that anyone has asked me to define my style in three words or less (how does one define style?), but I would say the way I dress veers weird but cute. I could go the route of elastic-waist bottoms and one-dimensional dresses by brands monopolizing some of the most popular social media accounts and newsletters, but in doing so, I would lose who I am by way of the way I dress. We are vastly different people, so how could we possibly want to dress alike? Elastic waists and loose dresses are fool-proof building blocks of a maternity wardrobe, but there are so many opportunities for play within that structure. Instead of one dimension, why not go for three?
One of the few things I continue to delight in when it comes to fashion is searching far and wide for something that feels just right, while learning all that I can about a brand, a collection, the origins of a garment or the techniques used in its creation. Even within the confined parameters of what I can wear in my 39th week of pregnancy, it makes getting dressed more stimulating – it’s not a regular tent dress; it’s a tent dress with an adjustable bungee cord running through the neckline! In my early twenties, I once purchased a secondhand wool coat that had an International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union label stitched to its interior, which resulted in an incredible history lesson. Seeking and shopping in this way feels infinitely more satisfying to me, and gives me greater reason to treasure what I add to my closet and spend my money on.
As someone who usually takes a good long while to buy almost anything, I haven’t bought anything quite as quickly as this blue and white gingham set the second I spotted it on The Real Real (why they’re not sponning my con is a matter for another day!). On the site it was listed as a skirt set and looked on the verge of being prim, and I knew I had to have it. To my surprise upon arrival, it turned out that the skirt was actually a pair of long shorts – dare I say culottes? – which made me love it even more.
The top and skirt was a very generous gift from my husband, presumably for not coming entirely unglued during these past nine months, and is from Dries Van Noten’s current fall collection. The skirt is in a wrap style, and I was surprised to discover that I could get it on a thousand weeks pregnant. I’m looking forward to wearing this outfit with a boring boxy trench coat once the weather cools down!
It’s true what they say: one can never have enough white cotton Comme des Garçons skirts. It’s difficult to tell from this picture, but the hem has elasticated bands on both sides, and the back is cut slightly higher from the front. It also has the makings of an excellent forever skirt aka an elastic waist and deep pockets.
The top is from Prada’s infamous Spring/Summer 2009 slippery sock collection, although not a runway piece. It’s cut in a deliciously soft silk jersey which miraculously fits over my daily-growing bump.
I bought this dress from Los Feliz, top purveyors of hard-to-find YSL and Plein Sud, while in Barcelona a few years ago, and wore it to see the Yves Saint Laurent and Photography show at the ICP because I love to be very on the nose. The dress is from the brand’s Variation line, which was one of their accessible ready-to-wear lines first introduced in the 1980s; I really wish brands would do this today, instead of becoming increasingly elitist and inaccessible.
The necklace is from Prada’s Spring 2005 collection, and at first I thought it might look a bit much, then corrected my line of thought to why the hell not?
The following outfits are from mid-way through the third trimester, and if you’ve been reading this newsletter long enough, you’ll know they’ve been good friends of mine. With the exception of the above dress, which needed to be decommissioned at 37 weeks, the others remain accommodating mere days before my due date.
These Dries Van Noten dresses are very special to me because, other than the green and pink Len Lye printed dress, they are runway pieces that I immediately fell in love with, but which took years for me to find secondhand. Even though they are precious to me, the fabrics, for the most part, aren’t all too fussy, and will be able to weather exploding diapers and spit up. I definitely wasn’t thinking of these things when I bought these pieces, but what the cost of dry-cleaning would amount to was certainly a consideration.
This dress and the blue and pink bungee cord funstrosity are both from Spring 2019. In her review of the collection for Vogue, Sarah Mower mentions the palpable relief from the audience as the first looks emerged, a response to a season largely eager to capitalize on youth-oriented fleeting trends, and the desires of modern women being sidelined. Having collected a fair number of pieces, and being able to wear them before and throughout pregnancy, this sentiment was really driven home. The clothes I have from this season are the ones I instinctively always reach for when getting dressed and have to make an effort to actually not wear, because everything about them, from cut to material, colour and print, feel so intrinsically me.
And yes, I did check to see if they would work for potential breastfeeding, and of course they do.
Until next time, or after I give birth, whichever comes first!
I think I wrote this to you once before and it still applies “best dressed pregnant person ever”🙃❤️
Preach.
The most surprising thing to me during my pregnancy was how radically my taste in fits had changed. I used to be a « looser the better » person and became almost overnight (as soon as the test car out positive) a « tighter the better ». Would have loved to say I kept the body tenderness post partum but sadly no.. very inspired by your words and wishing you a safe delivery !!