‘We need to talk about the utter monotony of maternity wear and why style matters when you’re pregnant’

"If you are pregnant, the gap between what you want and what your favourite shops are willing to provide becomes an abyss."

Ellen Coyne

I arrived at the shop ready to spend a quantity of money known best as “a regret”.

Once you go into town needing a specific outfit for a specific event, you’re doomed. I was facing my first book launch, and all of its attendant photo shoot requirements, while six months pregnant. I had nothing to wear. The usual haunts had proved fruitless. Fear gave way to desperation, which lured me over the elegant threshold of the swish department store. My overdraft was in very real peril.