Readers’ Best Tips to Hide a Baby Bump
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What are your best tips to hide a baby bump, either at work or in general?
Revealing your pregnancy at work can get pretty complicated — not only might you not want to reveal in case of miscarriage, you may worry your boss won’t put you on projects with timelines that aren’t conducive to pregnancy/maternity leave — as well as other kinds of discrimination and just nosy, inappropriate coworkers. Since we haven’t talked about it in quite a while, we realized we were due for a post on hiding a baby bump at work.
We hope these tips will help you delay disclosing your pregnancy at work until the time is right.
Corporette and CorporetteMoms readers shared some really great tips in the comments on past posts about hiding a baby bump (and oldie-but-goodie open thread) and how to hide a baby bump with your second child, and today we’re sharing their best advice. What are your best tips to hide a baby bump, readers?
Psst: We’ve also shared our maternity work wardrobe checklist and talked about the best maternity suits for professional women, the best maternity dresses for work, budgeting for your maternity wardrobe, and general advice for maternity shopping for work.
Over at Corporette, we’ve also discussed how to announce your pregnancy at work and when to announce your pregnancy to your clients.
Readers’ Best Tips for Hiding a Baby Bump at Work
Use colors strategically
Dressing in dark colors and/or monochrome can help downplay a bump; for example, try black pants, an untucked black top, and an open-front or unbuttoned black blazer.
Yes, this might be a case for relaxing the rule of not mixing black fabrics to try to create a suit. Also try dark gray, navy, etc.
Be aware that you may end up drawing more attention to yourself if you suddenly start doing this after always wearing bright colors and patterns…
Remember that layers are your friend
For example, pair a non-fitted top with an open-front cardigan (especially a longer cardigan, and the less structured, the better) or a blazer. For cardigans with buttons, try only fastening the top one or two.
When you’re pregnant, you’re likely to feel hotter than usual, so you may want to avoid pairing two long-sleeved layers, depending on what your office temperature typically is.
{related: check out our roundup of maternity workwear essentials!} (recently updated!)
Delay wearing maternity clothing if you can
Maternity clothing, of course, is typically designed to accentuate a baby bump rather than hide it, so keep that in mind! You’ll probably be able to wear your regular clothing for several weeks (or more) into your pregnancy, anyway.
Also try wearing non-maternity clothing one size larger than what you typically wear.
Unfortunately, the timing isn’t something you can predict — and starting with your second pregnancy, you’ll probably start showing earlier.
Use details as a distraction
Try to deemphasize your growing bust and belly by wearing eye-catching/larger earrings and necklaces, and scarves, for example. While V-necks can play up your cleavage, crewnecks aren’t a great solution either, because they’ll make you look bigger on top.
Interesting necklines or collars can help, however — for example, tops with ruffles.
Speaking of ruffles, pregnancy might mean having to give up the trends you love or wear some that you don’t, unfortunately.
Be mindful of skirt/dress silhouettes
Depending on the individual items of clothing, it might be best to avoid most pencil skirts and sheath dresses, especially stretchy ones, in favor of fit-and-flare and A-line styles.
Dresses with ruching around the stomach area or faux wrap dresses can also be good bets.
Choose the right tops
Button-front shirts can be a good choice for early in your pregnancy, especially those designed to be worn untucked. (You may suddenly need our best solutions for gaping shirts, however.)
Unstructured, flowy tops can help, but be wary of empire waists (tops and dresses, for that matter), because the style can backfire — after all, this waistline can make even non-pregnant women look like they’re expecting…
Other tips to hide a baby bump
Readers have also shared non-clothing tips for camouflaging an early pregnancy.
These may seem silly — or not — depending on your situation and how careful you’re trying to be regarding the timing of your family news.
When you’re walking around a busy office, for example, carry a large bag to partially hide your belly. This also works with file folders, binders, etc. One reader pointed out that arriving five minutes early to meetings can ensure you don’t have to walk past a conference room full of people with your growing belly on display.
What are your favorite ways of hiding a baby bump at work? How early in your pregnancy did you start wearing maternity clothes? How early did you/do you start to show?
Psst, these are some of our favorite pregnancy books for working moms…
The best pregnancy books for future working moms: pink / white / pink / multicolored — and here are all of the reader favorites!
Stock photo via Stencil.
When do people start to show with their second? (I’m sure it varies person to person) but what would you say is typical? With my first I had lost about 20lbs (I’m 5’3″) before getting pregnant so I think weeks 8-12 looked like I had just fallen off the wagon a bit weight loss wise and no one said anything at all. Weeks 12-16 I think people were starting to get a little suspicious. And by week 18 I was clearly pregnant to anyone who knew me, but I think strangers probably couldn’t tell. Somewhere between 20 and 22 weeks I was very clearly pregnant and started to get comments from strangers at the grocery store. So would this timeline be sped up by 4 weeks or so? More?
This is probably the most anti-feminist post I’ve seen in months. Why are women expected to change their behavior when it is society who must change? Enough playing along with the patriarchy in the work environment. Women deserve better than this. Why are we hiding pregnancy in 2021?
Find yourself in the middle of a global pandemic with everyone working from home?
One of the best things you can do is to keep your normal style of dressing. Buying clothes one size up is really helpful; they will fit postpartum and there’s no need to buy maternity clothes when your shape still fits into normal cuts.
I got the same clothes that I’d ordered from Land’s End two sizes up, and I transitioned into them as I got bigger. Everyone thought I’d just gained weight. I hid my pregnancy because we were not sure if I would miscarry at any one point. My pregnancy was a high-risk one. Also, I was consulting, and I did not want to lose the gig. Someone here questioned why should women have to change their behavior, and hide their pregnancy. Unfortunately, the reality is that if you want your privacy for any reason and/or you want to be able to keep your job/project/title as long as possible, you have to keep your pregnancy under wraps. HR is NOT your friend. They are there for the company, and if they want to phase you out they will. Working in the corporate world, I saw a lot of dirty moves. A lot of those companies that are supposedly “woke”, and make it to those “fabulous company” lists, treat women and other minority groups like commodities/corporate slaves. They will dump you even though you were “marvelous” before you got pregnant, and their league of shark lawyers will make sure that they find some acceptable reason why you were dumped. So, why not play the game to YOUR advantage?