During pregnancy, even the most glowing expectant mother can find herself at a stage in which it’s all-too-easy to feel less than glamorous. At that point it’s time to indulge in a secret weapon for instant pregnant beauty – luxuriously indulgent skincare.

So what if your favourite jeans might never fit again? Even your shoes might be out of a job if you’re one of the unlucky Moms whose feet increase in size during pregnancy (it can happen) but there’s no need to fret because you can still feel fantastic in your very own birthday suit. And it’s one outfit that we reckon the proud Daddy-to-Be in your life will be only too happy to cast his eye over!

So without further ado here are Haute Mama’s one hit wonders for super-happy pregnant skin – five brilliant beauty products that solve each and every pregnancy problem, and which you’re sure to want to keep using once your bump becomes a baby:

1. Soothe an Itchy Bump with Belli All Day Body Moisture Body Lotion, which deeply moisturizes, comforts and soothes dry, itchy skin with essential oil of lemon, which is known for its uplifting qualities and aroma-therapeutic ability to calm upset stomachs. Chamomile softens and refreshes. Apply it daily to slightly dampened skin, ideally after a bath or shower, smoothing a small amount over your bump to keep the discomfort at bay.
   
   
2. Relax Tired Feet with Belli’s Foot Relief Cream. It does the trick immediately. The scent is minty, and not at all overwhelming. Haute Mama founder Fiona says “I absolutely love how thick and indulgent this lotion is, but I worried that the consistency might make it difficult to absorb, acting as more of a barrier on my skin. I needn’t have worried as it sunk right in as soon as I applied it, and after only two applications I noticed that were feet were incredibly soft.”
   
   
3. Diminish Spots with Belli’s Acne Clearing Facial Wash. It’s so fabulous that it comes highly recommended by the skincare gurus at Now! Maternity & Baby Magazine. My girlfriend Claire had this to say: So far I’ve been really pleased with Belli’s Acne Clearing Facial Wash. It doesn’t dry me out and it hasn’t caused a flare up of my rosacea. You can use it daily or it can be left on directly as a mask for 5 minutes, I’ve been rotating the 2 approaches. Lastly, I feel really good about all the ingredient screening they do and in the end they still have created a really active wash containing lactic acid that seems to do the job well for me. So if you are in the market for a new acne solution… pregnant or not definitely give this one a try. 
   
   
4. Smooth Rough Skin A full body exfoliation with Belli’s Skin Smoothing Body Exfoliator leaves your skin amazingly smooth. This scrub is very soft & gentle. It’s sugar based and contains just enough oil to be moisturizing, without causing you to slip and fall in the tub! Some of its ingredients include green tea, ginseng and peppermint oil. Finish with Belli’s cult product – Elasticity Oil and you’ll have a recipe for irresistibly silky skin!
   
   
5. Banish Puffy Eyes: You don’t have to be a new mama (but those sleepless nights help!) to enjoy the benefits of Belli Motherhood’s Eye Brightening Cream. If dark circles are your problem, this product can safely get rid of them. Keep the tube in the refrigerator for an extra cool and soothing effect! Safe in pregnancy and when nursing, too.

We’d love to know your skincare secrets. I’ll start by admitting to buying Pond’s cream after hearing that Kylie credited it as the secret to her youthful glow. One month later neither my face (nor my bottom, although I can’t say I tried it there) are any closer to resembling Kylie’s, sadly. Your turn to tell us your skincare secrets!

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Welcome to another Fashion Friday, Haute Mamas! Today’s theme, drum roll please, is …. BOOBS! There, we said it. Boob. Oops, and again. They just keep slipping out.

Ahem. In a bid to raise this discussion out of the realms of a Carry On film, let’s get back to the subject in hand. Boobs, and more specifically, breastfeeding. Not exactly a fashion statement, but not far off. If there’s one subject guaranteed to divide worldwide Moms it’s breastfeeding. One minute we’re all making like Cyndi Lauper and belting out Girls Just Wanna Have Fun together, the next someone inadvertently draws an invisible line and makes us feel that we have to choose which side to stand in the Breast v Bottle Debate, and it’s all hair-pulling, name-calling and scratching. Silly, really, since we’re all Mom with children whose lives depend on us, so you’d think we’d act a little more like grown-ups.

But we’re not even referring to the age-old nappy-bags-at-dawn Breast v Bottle debate, although both sides of that issue deserve a post all of their own. But not today. No, we’re talking about getting your boobs out in public. Right or wrong? (Er, please restrict your comment to boob-baring in the context of feeding babies. What you get up to on date night is up to you.)

It’s an age-old issue too, isn’t? Barely a few months go by without a story hitting the media along the vague lines that a Mom has been merrily breastfeeding her child in public, only to have ended up on the receiving end of a withering look or a mouthful of abuse… and wasn’t there even a story once about some guy pouring a bucket of water all over a breastfeeding Mom? I was afraid to look that one up in Google so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

So where to start? Well, breastfeeding isn’t easy, as our very own Head Haute Mama can testify. She had these illuminating words to share on the subject – in fact we had to remind her to pause for air – but if you’re yet to attempt to keep another human being alive entirely through virtue of your nipples, you might want to skip this bit and come back to it when it’s less likely to put you off…

“When I was first getting to grips with breastfeeding there was only one helpful thing anyone could have said that I hadn’t already heard. It was this: ‘I have access to morphine. What’s your address?’ I was willing to try anything. I detested breastfeeding and yet felt entirely pressured to endure the excruciating pain and persevere with it. After 6 weeks we were told to see a lactation consultant. It actually kind of worked but at that stage I think I had become immune to the searing pain. As we walked away from the doctor’s office Haute Dada said to me, ‘I can’t believe we’ve just paid 450 bucks to teach our kid how to suck.’”

Whatever your views on breasfteeding, and whether you share Fiona’s eye-watering experience or not, manipulating your post-partum Jordan-esque boobs into your baby’s tiny ravenous gaping mouth has to be one of the most ridiculous experiences of early motherhood. Like childbirth itself, it’s as though someone got their geometry all wrong when working out what could fit where, and how. It seems like breastfeeding should be easy, but it’s not, which must be partly why so many Moms end up feeling like abject failures if they reach for the bottle. Er, the bottle of formula milk, that is. (Reaching for the valium or gin when you’re a new Mom is so much more socially acceptable.)

And even if you get the logistics to work and everything functions properly, you’ve then got to work out how to free those milky beasts without committing a public act of indecency. That takes serious thought and practice. I vividly remember only being able to breastfeed if I was virtually starkers in the first few days, and it seemed so terribly cruel that just as I’d managed to find three spare minutes in which to shower and get dressed, I then had to work out how to undress myself in order to get the All Day Milk Bar open before the baby exploded from hunger. I’m exhausted just remembering all this.

Thankfully, clothes designers have come a long way in those five years, and there’s now a really fabulous choice when it comes to nursing bras, breastfeeding tops, and gorgeous but discreet nursing covers. Back in the day, my best friend and I thought we were utter goddesses when we realised that if we just wore a vest underneath a normal top, we could pop up the top and latch the baby on without having to inflict our muffin tops on the world. That was all well and good until summer, when additional layers on a breastfeeding Mom are pure torture, and don’t even get me started on the day I wore a dress to a wedding and only realised half way through the ceremony that the only way to feed my screaming baby was to lift my dress above my chest.

Whatever your views on breastfeeding, and regardless of whether you believe in your right to bare all in the name of yourchild’s nutritional needs, or prefer a more modest approach to getting the baby fed, the one thing that is guaranteed to make the experience of feeding your child easier is if you feel at ease. So we reckon that’s all that really counts. Get your boobs out if that works, and defend your right to do so. We’d be really surprised if anyone gives you grief and if they do, there’s a point to be made that they’re the ones with the skewed idea of what boobs are for, and thus when they should be seen. It makes me laugh that few people complain about objectification of women when they’re surrounded by a media which insists on dressing women in as few clothes as people – so it strikes me as absurd that anyone’s got the audacity to complain about a woman using her breasts to feed her child, which is arguably what the Good Lord created them for in the first place. Phew, rant over. Equally, if you’re happier covering up and prefer not to be noticed, invest in some lovely cover-ups and then the world is your oyster.

I think I knew I’d arrived as a breastfeeding Mom when I replied to an email with a glass of wine in hand, all while feeding the babe. Like almost everything associated with motherhood, breastfeeding gets easier. But the first step is going easier on yourself.

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When it comes to dressing with a ‘baby on board’ it can be tempting to stick to the safe, trusted confines of black. Famed for its slimming properties and all-round powers of flattery, black is a staple colour in many an expectant or new mom’s wardrobe, but why fade to shades of grey just because you’re with child?

Colour can be daunting, we know. Who doesn’t remember their own Mom going to the groundbreaking style phenomenon of the 80‘s that was a Colour-Me-Beautiful event? Overnight, mothers everywhere abandoned half their clothing collection on the basis that it was the wrong ‘season’. Fortunately, fashion has moved forward, but clearly some of us are scarred by that experience, and remain anxious about experimenting with colour. So sidestep the issue (in fabulous shoes, naturally) and create a little silver lining to your look with a touch of bling.

A dash of flash – in the form of a subtle touches of gold or silver – can instantly update a black ensemble without breaking the bank or putting you in danger of looking like a walking rainbow. Go for a sparkly belt, worn empire-style above your bump or slung low to show off your gorgeous blooming curves. Or how about this gold plated butterfly cuff bangle with aqua coloured Swarovski crystals and stones for a touch of class? Gorgeous.

And if shoes are your thing, feast your eyes on these lovely gold heels, from our fab new range by Rockin’ Reptile. We reckon even Dorothy would happily leave home for a pair!

PS: Welcome to the first Haute Mama Fashion Friday! Look out for posts every other Friday about style and fashion for Moms and Moms-to-Be, interspersed with Focus Fridays when we’ll post something intended to provoke some thought and maybe even some debate…

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