Maternity Monday: Cowl Neck Short Sleeve Maternity Dress

·

This post may contain affiliate links and CorporetteMoms may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

A woman wearing a Cowl Neck Short Sleeve Maternity DressPattyBoutik is a brand we’ve featured before because it’s always very highly reviewed on Amazon (this one has 4.4 stars with 400+ reviews) and it’s always really affordable. This dress comes in five colors in S–XL and looks like a great basic style if you’re looking for something to dress down or dress up for work. PattyBoutik Mama Cowl Neck Short Sleeve Maternity Dress This post contains affiliate links and CorporetteMoms may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. For more details see here. Thank you so much for your support! Building a maternity wardrobe for work? Check out our page with more suggestions along both classic and trendy/seasonal lines.

Sales of note for 2/7:

(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)

  • Nordstrom – Winter Sale, up to 60% off! 7850 new markdowns for women
  • Ann Taylor – Extra 25% off your $175+ purchase — and $30 of full-price pants and denim
  • Banana Republic Factory – Up to 50% off everything + extra 15% off
  • Boden – 15% off new season styles
  • Eloquii – 60% off 100s of styles
  • J.Crew – Extra 50% off all sale styles
  • J.Crew Factory – 40% off everything including new arrivals + extra 20% off $125+
  • Rothy’s – Final Few: Up to 40% off last-chance styles
  • Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
  • Talbots – 40% off one item + free shipping on $150+

And — here are some of our latest threadjacks of interestworking mom questions asked by the commenters!

117 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

We get our mileage out of family photos. We use them for Christmas cards. We order prints and put them in our hallway (rotating through 4 frames) and in my office (rotating through 3 frames). We order prints for the grandparents as their Christmas presents. And last year, I ordered an ornament with the photos printed on each side because it was free (after ordering Christmas cards) + the cost of shipping. We took it out last night while decorating the tree, and we really liked it, so we’ll probably do that again this year if there’s another good deal.

Word!

This seems like such a dumb question but: what do you do with family photos? A friend of mine took some amazing photos of our little family but I’m not sure what to do with them. The grandmas probably don’t want another photo book to collect dust (plus they are a lot of work and not cheap for something that just sits on the shelf). Should I just order prints and give them a few? I’m struggling here.

Update on the milk saga from last week – thank you for the recommendation of straw cups. He doesn’t *love* them, but is drinking a little milk (big change from absolutely zero milk). I explained to him that the bottle went away and milk is now in straw cups. I have no idea if that helped at all. And this morning he said his very first ever sentence – “no milk.” Shrug!

This weekend has gotten out of control, schedule-wise, for our family. We are up to 5 babysitters or family members watching our 2-year-old son at different times over the weekend (although MIL is watching him twice). Nothing is easy to cancel without hurting people’s feelings and/or causing a lot more drama than I’m willing to take on even though I feel guilty. It really just mushroomed–we scheduled a few non-essential things first, and then several essential things came up around them. I guess we’ll just try to make sure we give Kiddo some quality time when we are around. Tell me it will be OK?

feeling less sorry for myself about pumping at work. this is hilarous/horrible. FWIW i found that taking a single dose of metamucil at night helped with the pregnancy constipation. just make sure separate vitamins and metamucil otherwise you won’t absorb the vitamins well. don’t hesitate to take something for it — waiting until you have piles/fissures is way worse. ask me how i know.

I went part time when my second was born. She’s 17 months now and I often struggle with staying at home (when the kids aren’t home, they’re in preschool/daycare but I work at him).

Thought I’d give you ladies that dream about being home more a glimpse into my complete and total lack of personal space- I try explaining this to my husband who didn’t quite get it until today.

I was in the bathroom, pooping. I’m pregnant with #3 and constipated as all get-out. My kids were playing together in one of their rooms and I was smart enough to close the door, which I know (thought) the little one can’t open.

But yet, in case my little one, who had dragged a step stool to the bathroom door in desperation to get in. She came in and tried to get me to pick her up (I’m on the toilet. Go away. Here, play with this empty toilet paper roll.). She then proceeds to grab my underwear, which are *around my knees* and climbs into them.

WTF. So now I’m on the toilet with a 17 month old *inside the leg hold of my underwear that I am still wearing*. And she’s clawing at me demanding to be picked up. I finally give in. So now I’m straining to poop, 16 weeks pregnant, with a toddler on my lap. And she decides to start clawing at my eyes and laughing like a maniac. She’s usually up in my business and driving me crazy (unlike my. Older one, who never did anything like this except snuggle), but this was Peak Invasion of Space.

In that moment, I knew I am a FT working mom at heart and after I was finished texted DH to let him know I’m going to add a day to the toddler’s daycare schedule lest I run screaming into the road naked one of these days.

Ps- my preschooler was happily reading to herself in her room while all this went on; they are not all nuts! Here’s hoping #3 is calm.

I just need to vent for a second.

We are missing one box of our Christmas decorations/ornaments/supplies. Which means our tree is missing a third of its ornaments. I reorganized the whole attic yesterday. The box is still missing. I am going to lose my mind.

My husband is having a career crisis and is moping around and there’s absolutely nothing I can really say or do. He’s declared himself a failure in his chosen career because of some recent bumps and a difficult return to working for himself after being our primary childcare provider for a few years. I waffle between wanting to sharply say, fine, I’m tired of watching you mope, you’re a failure, do what you’re suggesting and “grow up and get a real job,” and being supportive, reminding him that he was very successful before he quit to take care of a very demanding tiny human, and that maybe he should try working, now that we have full-time childcare, for longer than a week before he throws in the towel. As the sole income-earner I am running out of patience for the mope.

It’s the holidays, which I absolutely love, but once again I am president of everything, and I’m already burned out on that and yesterday was the first day of Advent. This will totally out me if you know me, but I grew up singing in a prestigious children’s choir that has a holiday reunion concert for alums that I loved as a kid. I’ve been in the same town as said concert for three years now, and every year I’ve had to bail the day of. Singing requires a whole Saturday– the morning for rehearsal and an early call time the night of the concert– and every year there’s been something. Once we all had fevers. Once my husband was throwing a hissy about something and I decided it wasn’t worth the emotional cost. Once I think I was too damn tired from everything else this time of year and gave myself an out. I am SO sad about not getting to sing again. But I haven’t even registered this year, because what’s the freaking use? I’m never going to be able to justify a whole weekend day in which I do something for myself.

In conclusion, I’ve only cried twice this morning, and bah humbug.

Everyone kept saying the same thing to me when I got back to work. Anytime anyone would ask, “Isn’t it just so hard coming back to work?” I would just say, “Not really. It feels good to be back at work. Taking care of a baby full time is so much harder than this job.”

Just a vent, and I know they don’t mean anything by it, but literally every single one of my coworkers since I’ve come back to work has said, “Oh, it must be so hard to leave him! Don’t you miss him?”

There’s no right answer! Such a loaded question. I also had one coworker (another mom!) say that you shouldn’t send kids to daycare until they can talk. That was a bold comment.

Lots of smiling and nodding….

My 7 month old got her first major cold two months ago and has been sick pretty much non-stop since then. She is in daycare and we also have 4.5 year old. So far she’s had pink eye, RSV, and most recently a double ear infection. Prior to this, she’d been a mostly happy chill baby and slept relatively well. Since the start of the illnesses she’s been much fussier and sleep has been extremely hit or miss. When we started treating the ear infection last week, her improvement was phenomenal – we finally had our happy baby back, and she slept 10 hours straight through the night for 5 days in a row. It had been two months since she’d acted this way! A few days ago she picked up another cold and everything went back to fussy baby and up every few hours at night.

I feel like I am at the end of my rope but don’t know what to do about all the illness. Especially getting a glimpse of what life could be like if she wasn’t sick all the time really has me down. I know being sick the first couple of years is normal with daycare, but it was not this bad with our first and the change in her behavior and all of our sleep is just so dramatic. I’m wondering if we should start looking into getting a nanny but I really don’t want to pull my older kid out of daycare which he loves, and leaving one in daycare and one at home with a nanny doesn’t really make sense and would be crazy expensive. Plus the older one would probably just bring all the germs home to the baby anyway.

Am I just going to have to make peace with the fact that this baby is going to be sick and crabby for many more months and we won’t be sleeping well any time soon? Has anyone gone the nanny route due to illness, and how did it work out for you? Any advice for getting a sick baby to sleep better? We’ve tried humidifier in her room and raising the head of the crib.

Had this (and the long sleeved version) and got tons of use from them!

Just went to my 33-week appointment and the baby is sideways. Anyone have encouraging stories about sideways babies who moved down into the proper position? My first stayed obediently head-down for the entire pregnancy, so this is a new experience…

Kept them. Second was a different gender so keeping some of his too since we want a third!

Only exception is things I really didn’t love or don’t have an attachment to on boy I gave away.

Sigh. So many bodycon maternity dresses out there right now. It’s tough since my @$$ always grows as much as my belly. I stick to wrap or faux-wrap dresses.

“Maternity Leave” question (I use air quotes because my leave will not actually be maternity leave, it will be short-term disability and unpaid FMLA, so I refuse to pretend like I get maternity leave)
For mamas who worked up until birth: do you regret it? If I go out before birth (which would require a doctor to put me on STD before then) my FMLA runs concurrently, so I lose post-baby time. I’ve confirmed that this is the case with HR. However, the idea of working until my water breaks seems miserable too. I’m going to ask to telework the last week or two of my pregnancy, especially since I work an hour from the hospital I have to give birth in, but wanted to hear from folks who have “been there” so-to-speak. On the one hand, I hate that I’m literally expected to work until I give birth or have to give up time with my baby, but on the other hand if they’re willing to keep paying me to show up and waddle around the last couple weeks of my pregnancy then I’m fine with it?