Painting by Pablo Picasso.

Now that I'm on the final few weeks of pregnancy, I've started to prepare for the next stage .... I've started to look into the different kinds of nursing wear available in the Philippines.

So far, I've found two sources of nursing wear/breastfeeding clothes in the Philippines....

The first is Blissfulbabes. This brand was started by a Filipina when she was living in Canada who started to sell her nursing wear in North America. She has since moved back to the Philippines with her family and her nursing wear is now available here. They have a showroom at their residence in Valle Verde I, Pasig, telephone number (02) 671-5826 (look for Joy or Cecile to schedule an appointment). I haven't visited the showroom yet, but the nursing tank tops (P850 each) I bought from Indigo Manila are made by Blissfulbabes and they look very nice and have intelligent construction. Hip Moms and Babies and Happy Babies are two other Multiply sellers that also distribute many of Blissfulbabes' products.

The second is Mommy Matters. Their clothes are available at Havin' a Baby, Rustan's Department Store, Maxibear, and Landmark Department Store. But what I find brilliant is their fit-at-home service in some areas of Metro Manila: you just look through their catalog on Multiply (I'm not sure if the catalog is complete, though), email them your size and a list of the items you're interested in, and someone from Mommy Matters will come and drop off the clothes (whatever is available from the list you gave them) at your residence. You have a few days to try them on and make a decision, and then you just call them to inform them when you're ready for them to pick up the items. There's a minimal delivery fee for the service, whether you purchase anything from them or not, but the delivery fee is waived if you buy more than a certain amount. Most of their items are around P600 but some of their older designs are heavily discounted at 30% to 75% off.

I had Mommy Matters deliver a few of their items today. It's always been a little hard for me to find RTW clothes that fit me perfectly--depending on the style, I'm sometimes a small, sometimes a medium, and sometimes a large. The fit-at-home service was very helpful then, because I could try on different styles.

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After checking out all these nursing clothes I've learned one helpful thing. Even when you haven't given birth yet, it's already possible to buy a few nursing clothes for the first several weeks of baby's life. Casual styles like nursing T-shirts are best for this because the looser construction and often stretchier fabrics make it possible for you to easily estimate whether the item will fit you even as your bump begins to shrink. I do think that office clothes, like button polos, however, are best bought a few weeks after you've given birth (maybe right before your maternity leave ends) because the tailored construction is best fit when you have a more exact idea of what your postpartum body will look like.