How to milk it

As I've said more than once, I love being pregnant. First, there's the whole miracle of life thing. And then—coming a very close second—is the fact that pregnancy kind of gives you a competitive advantage in the cute stakes.

(I'm shallow enough to need constant approval from my fellow man, and my pregnant self, version 2.0 if you will, is much more likely to get it.) You don't have to hold your stomach in eight hours a day, and being rotund is positively encouraged.

Impregnate me and, almost instantaneously, I become stylish. I'm perky, I'm sassy. I'm ebullient, I'm proactive. Oh crikey, I'm working twelve hour days and nobody cares that I'm having a baby.

So, dear reader, I encourage you to plan your maternity wardrobe with care and caution. Being effortlessly stylish while pregnant is one thing. But making pregnancy look effortless is simply not a good idea. Not if you really want to milk it, that is.

Excerpt from “Milk It: How to Get More Than a Baby out of the Next Nine Months” by Kate Hodson