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Ooh: Seraphine has always been a classy maternity favorite (particularly their knot dress), but they have a ton of cute new dresses out and it’s nice to see the same sophisticated, tailored look being applied to different shapes. I love the three quarter length sleeves, the empire waist, and that flattering scoopneck. It’s $159, available in sizes XS-M, at Nordstrom. Seraphine Christine Fit & Flare Maternity Dress
(L-all)
Building a maternity wardrobe for work? Check out our page with more suggestions along both classic and trendy/seasonal lines.
Sales of note for 9.10.24
(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)
- Ann Taylor – 30% off your purchase
- Banana Republic Factory – Up to 50% off everything + extra 20% off
- Boden – 15% off new styles
- Eloquii – $29 and up select styles; up to 50% off everything else
- J.Crew – Up to 50% off wear-to-work styles; extra 30% off sale styles
- J.Crew Factory – 40-60% off everything; extra 60% off clearance
- Lands’ End – 30% off full-price styles
- Loft – Extra 40% off sale styles
- Talbots – BOGO 50% everything, includes markdowns
- Zappos – 26,000+ women’s sale items! (check out these reader-favorite workwear brands on sale, and some of our favorite kids’ shoe brands on sale)
Kid/Family Sales
- Carter’s – Birthday sale, 40-50% off & extra 20% off select styles
- Hanna Andersson – Up to 50% off all baby; up to 40% off all Halloween
- J.Crew Crewcuts – Extra 30% off sale styles
- Old Navy – 40% off everything
- Target – BOGO 25% off select haircare, up to 25% off floor care items; up to 30% off indoor furniture up to 20% off TVs
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And — here are some of our latest threadjacks of interest – working mom questions asked by the commenters!
- The concept of “backup care” is so stupid…
- I need tips on managing employees in BigLaw who have to leave for daycare pickup…
- I’m thinking of leaning out to spend more time with my family – how can I find the perfect job for that?
- I’m now a SAHM and my husband needs to step up…
- How can I change my thinking to better recognize some of my husband’s contributions as important, like organizing the shed?
- What are your tips to having a good weekend with kids, especially with little kids? Do you have a set routine or plan?
Support hose recommendations? says
I’m in the third trimester of my second pregnancy and have varicose veins popping up in my legs. Any recommendations for support hose? All of the brands on Amazon seems to have very mixed reviews. TIA.
MSJ says
Biggest recommendation is going for thigh highs so you aren’t locked into paying extra for maternity. I also had a monstrously big twin belly so wasn’t sure anything over the belly would fit.
I bought some on Bright Direct – looking back, specific model was Allegro Sheer Support OPEN TOE Thigh High 15-20mmHg
They were good for the purpose although not the easiest to get on (but I think this is true for all compression hose). I also had to wear them in the high heat of the summer. But it was worth it
Chi Squared says
The TruForm brand open toe thigh highs worked for me. Joest not so much – they had a seam and a tag in the elastic part that made them extremely uncomfortable.
Anon says
Gift ideas for husbands 36th birthday? We currently have two children under two. Not so into alcohol/accessories. Really running out of ideas this far into our relationship!
ChiLaw says
Babysitting and a night out? Or overnight babysitting and a night in a hotel (with the ages of your kids, this would probably require like, really committed grandparents)? If you live close to somewhere getaway-ish (like where I live now, in my dreams I’d take husband to a hotel by the beach) you could whisk him away to somewhere serene?
Anon says
I got my husband Bose noise cancelling headphones in the same situation. Technically they were for traveling, but the humor of kids and a noisy household wasn’t lost on either of us.
EB0220 says
Oh, this is a great idea, too! My husband has some folding noise-cancelling headphones (mostly from traveling) and they are awesome.
EB0220 says
Maybe a class he is interested in that you two could take together? Might be easier to get a babysitter during the day than overnight. A show or event?
Momata says
A night out and some fun one on one time. We’re at the same family setup and I know my husband often feels . . . neglected.
TK says
Ladies, tips for ensuring our sons don’t grow up assuming that all women want to (or should want to) have sex with them, and that consent is either optional or irrelevant?
I’ve been worked up about this since Friday afternoon – that 40% of our electorate is willing to say it’s harmless ‘locker room talk’ with ‘boys being boys’ is so infuriating that I’m having a hard time even concentrating today.
mascot says
I don’t think it’s ever too early to start the conversation about consent. For little kids, you can start with body safety -eg only parents and doctors can see your genitals, no one touches them. We also don’t make our child give people hugs and remind him regularly to make sure his friends are ok with him hugging them or rough-housing or whatever. We talk about what makes people uncomfortable, we talk about personal space, we talk about how all people should be treated the same- regardless of what they look like or what sex they are. We talk about not trying to badger someone into doing something that you want to do when they say no and respecting the no (again, keeping in mind his age). We talk about not bullying and sticking up for people, even if our friends may be the ones doing the bullying. We try to demonstrate what a healthy romantic relationship looks like, etc. As he gets older, we will advance the conversation in an age appropriate fashion.
Pogo says
Watching this closely. Recently a friend of mine described some moms in our town who she doesn’t want to associate with as “the type who’ll be all like ‘what my son?!?’ someday”. Which was so sad because 1) I knew exactly the type she meant and 2) how depressing that we’re already thinking about little boys growing up to be rapists with apologist parents.
The same friend and I talked about the delicate situation of “boys who are mean to you because they like you”. It is absolutely true that this is how little boys express wanting to play with others (rough-housing, chasing, name-calling) but you certainly don’t want your little girl thinking that rough-housing = love.
mascot says
You don’t want your child thinking that violence=love. I think rough-housing as a form of play is different. If you watch group of kids rough-housing, you can generally tell when it’s all fun and games and big-body play. They aren’t trying to hurt each other and it’s play fighting. The deliberate inhibition of these hurting moves is even more apparent when you see a child and an adult rough-housing together. The adult could easily hurt the child, but they don’t. Yes, kids sometimes cross the line from playfighting into real fighting, but I think that they can tell when that happens. There’s actually a book, the art of roughhousing, that talks about the benefits of kids playing like this and how to facilitate it safely.
TK says
What frightens me most about the Trump comments and the conversations that have followed are all of the attempts to justify or normalize what is objectively criminal behavior. It’s so normalized that our sons are *genuinely* confused about what is or is not okay.
Related, it’s terrifying to realize that because of this normalization, it’s more than just a few ‘bad apples’ that don’t represent all men. Every woman has stories of the times she was assaulted, quite often by ‘nice guys,’ and almost always rationalized away by the victim afterwards. I can think of 5 instances, myself – an older cousin when I was 4, a grandmother’s boyfriend when I was 8 or 9, a boy in high school, a different boy in college, and a random stranger at a concert, sometime in my early 20’s.
For the 4 that I knew – all ‘nice guys.’ All had or went on to have normal jobs, and wives, and kids of their own. I don’t and never have considered myself a ‘victim’ or felt a great deal of trauma from any of these incidents – but that fact that it’s NORMAL or just something you should expect to have to put up with as a girl / woman living in society –
I don’t know. I’m rambling, obviously. But very worked up about this.
avocado says
I recently read the book “Untangled” about parenting teenaged girls. One of the tips that really stuck with me was the suggestion to ask girls “What do you think she really wants/wanted?” when discussing scenarios that pop up in the media, movies, songs, friends’ lives, etc. I think this approach could be useful with boys too.
Star Light, Star Bright says
What do you do when you are so exhausted by dealing with a crisis that you feel like you’re failing at everything and a little bit out of control with unhealthy coping mechanisms?
I’ve posted here before about helping a very close friend this summer (sort of a second mother to me). She has been out of town in an intensive rehab program since June and I am her financial POA, Due to a series of annoying/unfortunate events, I became her elderly mother’s medical and financial POA. Her mother received a cancer diagnosis a couple months ago, and ended up dying very quickly. I handled everything, including fending off my friend’s predatory brother, who attempted to rob his dying mother. I arranged 24 hour care, dealt with hospice, lawyers, bankers, planned the funeral, made travel arrangements for my friend to come back for her mother’s funeral, etc. Since the mother died, I have handled all the estate matters that the lawyers needed help with, including splitting up and moving out the personal property, which has been delightful (see: angry predatory brother). There have been four solid months of dealing with daily to weekly crises related to this family. At this point, I’m finally pretty much done with the intensive, hands on stuff, THANK GOD. But my friend will not be back until December. All her bills are on auto-pay, and I’m pretty much on auto-pilot. I am so burned out.
I work full time and have a toddler. Spending time with my husband and child makes me happy, but I’m so tired and burned out from all the additional emotional labor I’ve had to do. I am not as there for my husband as I should be. I’m resentful that he didn’t ever offer to help during this ongoing crisis. He’s resentful that I’ve been not really there for him for the last several months. I can’t handle the thought of “gardening” right now, even though I didn’t go through a dry spell even when our kid was a baby. I am shopping and drinking more than I should. Not so out of control that I think it’s a problem, but just more than I think I should.
How long is it going to take for me to feel better? I feel like I can’t catch my breath.
TBK says
What time does kiddo go to bed? Can you take the time between kid bedtime and your bedtime to completely devote to your relationship with your husband? At least for a week, or on every say Tuesday and Thursday evening? This could be just watching a movie together or even watching stupid online videos together, if your brain is too fried for anything else. (for myself, when I’m feeling resentful toward my husband, I find if I”m away from him, I’ll keep playing the “husband’s greatest transgressions” tape in my head, getting angrier and angrier and feeling more and more sorry for myself; but if I’m with him, I just think of all the things about him that are wonderful) I’m guessing you could do with a weekend away to yourself, but that might be a lot to ask if your husband has been doing double household duty while you’ve been caring for your friend. Do you have anyone who could take your toddler overnight so you and your husband could get a night away? How much housework do you and your husband have? Can you hire help, even just for a month or two, to give you more space without responsibilities? Can you replace drinking and shopping with something more fulfilling? If you have an office with a door, can you set aside 15 min each day to meditate? Are you getting exercise? If not, can you get away for a 20 min walk at lunchtime?
Star Light, Star Bright says
Oh, to be clear, I’m still totally pulling my weight around the house and am the default parent as well. I’ve just not been very emotionally available for my husband. Like, I’m physically there, but not emotionally there.
I’m in therapy and I meditate ~5 days a week. I have found meditating to be very helpful, especially when I’m having a stress freak-out about whatever the latest crisis is. I like the idea of taking a walk during lunch. The weather is beautiful right now– I should take advantage of that!
TBK says
Ugh, well then I think you deserve a weekend away!
rakma says
Oh hon. You’ve got to take care of yourself a little, and recover from all that extra emotional labor, before you’re going to be able to be there for your husband or anyone else.
Can you clear a day at work? Or at least an afternoon? Take yourself out to lunch (with a friend if you can schedule it) do whatever positive self care helps you (massage, therapy, exercise, manicure, sitting in a park not talking to a d*mn person) and give yourself permission to just think about you for a few hours.
After that, get a babysitter, schedule a date night, and talk about anything and everything other than this situation. (Maybe you and your husband need to talk about his lack of help/your focus being on this other thing, but make that separate)
I can’t guess at how long it will take you to feel better, but when I’m at this level of overwhelmed, taking positive steps towards taking care of myself is more helpful than time alone.
Anonymous says
I am beyond impressed that you even have your head above water. Small suggestion — when I feel like I shouldn’t have a drink for whatever reason, I make myself a cup of tea.
3L mama says
ok so yay! I passed the bar. Thanks for the advice/encouragement I received here. Now my next question:
I have often been told that if you want any boundaries in your biglaw job, you need to set them right away, or the job will inevitably eat your life. I am eager to start work and excited about my job, but yeah, I want boundaries. There are lots of experienced lawyer moms here, so I’m wondering – what are your limits? What is reasonable? Did you decide what worked for you and try to make that clear right away (e.g. “I am not available from 6:00-7:30pm”), or did you sort of work it out over time? Are there any boundaries you wished you had set and didn’t?
TBK says
I would consider ways to set boundaries quietly. I hate to say it but if you walk in and tell a senior associate “I’m not available at this, this, and this time” it will not go over well. If on the other hand you’re just not at your desk between 6:00 and 7:30 (but are checking emails), and then are back online at 7:30, it might not be noticed. Although I did work with a guy who had a baby at home and he got dinged for being out of the office after 6:00pm even though he was back online by 7:00 (he just wanted to see his baby awake for an hour). The senior associate would see his desk empty and wouldn’t even try emailing him; she’d just chalk him up as “gone”. MOst people I know who successfully set boundaries did it after killing themselves for the firm for a year or two. After showing themselves to be hard workers, they had an easier time pushing back. Also they had some seniority.
Anonymous says
At my biglaw firm, I don’t think saying (especially as a first year) that you are simply not available from 6-7:30 would fly. I think that when kicking off a matter, you can tell the people you interact with that you do your best to be offline from 6-7:30, but sometimes it can’t be helped. In my experience, that works better with some people than others. You are getting paid big bucks not entirely for your intelligence and training — a lot of it is for being available. So, you need to be available when it is required. That doesn’t mean you can never say no, or that something will come later. My style of setting boundaries is more case-by-case. I see a huge amount of variability in ability or willingness to push back, and it doesn’t necessarily correlate with success or respect at the firm. Associates who just accept every deadline and work on everything as if it were urgent will burn out and/or never see their families. Unless you work with really awesome and unusually observant people, people will just give you work as long as you can take it, and it is up to you to push back.
However, I do know some (more senior) people who have been able to carve out an hour or two in the evenings when they are simply offline. I have never been able to make that work with regularity, so I would appreciate other biglaw moms’ thoughts on this. Sometimes I wish I had started doing this earlier or think that I should start, but usually I feel like nobody really pays attention to when I am in or out of the office, and I can push back at the moment if necessary, so long as the work gets done.
Old Timer says
+1 to both Anonymous and TBK
To be frank, I think it would be really hard (and possibly career limiting) to overtly be setting those kinds of boundaries as a first year. It sucks, but that’s part of the reason behind a six-figure salary for someone who has little to no experience practicing law.
I think it also depends on your practice group and clients– because on the flip side of that, I don’t think anyone in my group would notice if you weren’t around provided all your work got done, because we rarely have calls/meetings that late or are passing drafts/revisions back that late – but I know there are plenty of practice groups that do operate like that.
Without knowing the ages of your kids/your family situation, is there anyway you can try for time with your littles in the morning? I think it’s less obvious for a junior associate to come in on the later side on a regular basis (and leave early to log back in later when you can), than leave early everyday.
Anonymous says
Anonymous at 3:07 here. Quality time with kids in the morning was my strategy as a first and second year in particular. Nobody notices (especially in New York) if you are not in the office until 9:30 or 10 am, and usually, nobody expects anything from you before then, but there have been weeks for me when it is difficult to get out of the office before 10 pm. I much prefer the dinnertime/bedtime ritual to getting dressed and breakfast for kids who want to stay in their pajamas all day and play, but better than nothing, and your kids feel the time you spend with them, even if that part is sort of a pain.
Anonymous says
+1. I have been on both sides of the boundary setting. When I was a first year, my minimum hours were the hours the partner I primarily worked for was in the office, and obviously I was there later when work needed to get done. I had a baby as a third year, and by that point I had a reputation as a hard worker who got things done, and so no one blinked an eye when I came back from maternity leave and explained that barring a major emergency, I would be leaving at 5:45 daily to pick up my kid (spouse worked 4 hours away, so it was understood that he couldn’t do pick up), and would be back online when I got home at 7:15 if needed, unless they wanted a baby in the office. (I worked an hour and a half from home, so everyone I worked with understood my child care constraints.)
Now as a senior associate who runs my own cases, I have the flexibility to be home for dinner every night (barring emergencies) and to not work (aside from monitoring emails) from dinner to the kids’ bedtime. I usually work again for a few hours after the kids are asleep.
But when my newly hired junior associate announced a week into his employment that he was leaving at 4:30 daily because his wife wanted him home by 5:00, and it was clear that he was completely offline for the rest of the night, to say that it did not go over well with me is an understatement. If he had been getting his work done well, quietly left, and was responsive to emails, I would have been much less irritated. But if I am working until midnight every night and half of the weekend, missing time with my family, and my junior associate is gallivanting around when he/she has work on his/her plate because he wants to set boundaries, it does not go over well. From here, it looks like entitlement and/or poor judgment. Don’t be that guy.
I will also say that when you are junior, you often don’t know how your work fits into the bigger picture and what the flow of cases/deals looks like, and so it is harder to understand when you will or will not be missed.
The other posters are right — a major reason junior Biglaw associates get paid so much is because the firm is buying your time and your constant availability.
Anon says
So I started at a new big law firm just after returning from maternity leave and I just left to get home for bedtime from day one. If something comes up, i stay, but no one blinks an eye when I leave (really very early) knowinf thats a Thing I Do. It helps this was a newish office and I was the first mom with young kids, but still. Just doing that from day one worked really really well for me as the “face time” expectations for me are just different than for others. And of course I always get back on after bedtime. I also try to be in the office sitting at my desk before most of the people O share a hall with/work with arrive, but honestly I dont beat them in by much.
shortperson says
it is very office dependent. i chose an office with no happy hour culture, the place is a ghost town at 530 PM even when everyone is billing 250-hour months because everyone has families that they want to see. i usually avoid email 6-730 although i will do a call etc if necessary, happens a few times a year. no one has ever complained. however, that’s my office, from the comments above it’s clear that this is not the norm.
Katala says
Late to reply here, but I unfortunately agree with most of the above. “Setting boundaries” as a brand-new junior looks very different than a senior associate coming back from maternity leave. I wouldn’t announce that you’ll be leaving at 6 and unavailable until 7:30. Do it when you can, but it might rub people the wrong way to say so.
Time with kids in the morning is a good idea, so you don’t count on seeing them for bedtime, but if you get to – bonus. I’ve found that as a junior, you’re often waiting for someone to review things or get time to discuss things with you. So the location and work schedules of the partners/seniors will influence when you can leave. I’d love to get out the door by 6, but the partner I work for tends to free up around then and I can’t just be gone every day. Luckily, he does try to leave around 6:30-6:45 so I can often make it home in time to tuck kiddo into bed. I think you’ll need to put some evenings in at the office to see what people’s patterns are.
That said, a lot of this depends on what your ultimate goals are. If you think you want to stay long-term, don’t turn people off by being obviously unavailable. But if you want to power through a few years and get out, it matters less that you develop a stellar reputation and I’ve certainly seen people coast for a couple years putting in mediocre effort.
3L mama says
Thanks for these thoughts. This is pretty much what I anticipated, and I certainly have no plans of announcing that I will be unavailable at a certain time every day right off the bat! Like I said, I’ve just frequently received the advice to “set boundaries right away” and I wasn’t sure what that looked like/if it was actually feasible, practically speaking.
The idea to see my baby in the morning is a good one – she’s up at 6:30 usually so I can hang out with her for an hour and a half and still be in the office by 8:30. I am still nursing so in my fantasy land I can be home to nurse her before she goes to bed too, but I’ll probably have to figure out a late afternoon pumping contingency plan instead.
ER says
If your baby is less than a year, I would definitely frame it as a nursing issue and I think you will get a lot more empathy.
Batgirl says
Any comfortable pumping bras out there?
ChiLaw says
I liked the Tanzky bra, available on Amazon. I def. wouldn’t wear it as my only bra — I partially disrobed and put it on to pump. But for that, it worked pretty well.
Batgirl says
Thanks, I guess I meant one I could wear all day. I work from home and it’d be so much easier to have a comfy one to just leave on. But looks like there isn’t!
Anon says
Simple Wishes. Worn over nursing bra and just while pumping. Hands free pumping bras are necessary! I think it’s about $25 on Am@zon and you only ever need one.