If having a baby isn’t an excuse to wear a dress with a giant rabbit on your boob and a rainbow on your bum, I don’t know what is.

Introducing my amazingly bonkers Cashmerette Pembroke Nursing Dress!

Let’s face it: store-bought maternity and nursing clothes are BO-RING. And forget about finding something fun and also in a plus size. Not going to happen! But just because I had a baby doesn’t mean I lost all sense of style. Well… I mean it did on the days when I couldn’t be bothered to change out of yoga pants, but the style was still in there, just waiting to get out.

Enter, my Lisa Congdon / Nerida Hansen fabric nursing Pembroke dress.

When I saw this jersey appear on the Nerida Hansen instagram I was smitten. Huge, bold, and colourful, and designed by the amazing artist Lisa Congdon. Two sad notes: first, it’s not available any more. Second, unfortunately it doesn’t wash well, as tends to be the case with black-printed cotton jersey, so I wouldn’t necessarily have recommended it anyway. But you know what, I’m still glad I made it and got some good wears out of it before it went blah.

When I first started nursing I found it so frustrating that I could only wear separates, so that’s where the inspiration for the Nursing Expansion pack came from. The Pembroke Dress is such a comfortable wear post-partum, and with the added adapted underlayer/new overlayer it’s also totally boob-accessible.

I have had many looks/compliments on this dress, and people didn’t even realize the boob access was there! Obviously I showed them, because it’s pretty funny.

I did do a rudimentary attempt at not getting anything too obscene in the nipple area and mostly managed. I quite like the fingers crossed above the left boob, perhaps a little good luck for keeping up the old supply.

I also spent much longer than intended trying to match the pattern on the over and under layer, to further disguise the nursing layer. When I stand perfectly still it works quite well but as you can imagine, mostly I’m not, so it shifts about a bit.

This really is the closest thing to PJs while looking extremely presentable that you can get as a nursing Mum, and it’s just a great blank canvas for some wacky fabric. It definitely perked me up at a time when I wasn’t sleeping much or really getting any time for myself, and what more can you really ask from a humble dress?

P.S. Cashmerette mums, remember that dreamy, hazy, confused state just after your baby arrives? Well so did my camera apparently, which decided to create this nice “soft focus” (AHEM) series of photos. It captures the spirit if not the crisp lines of this dress 😀