I’ve been spending the entire summer moonlighting as a watermelon smuggler, aka a person growing an actual human in her abdomen. And while the quest for comfortable, stylish, and certainly functional maternity clothing has been a fun challenge, sometimes I just want to shop regular clothes, ya know? In truth, I like to keep in mind while I’m pregnant that eventually I will be wearing non-maternity clothing again, and it would be great if a few of the pieces I’m purchasing during this timeframe had some longevity to them. Also, sometimes (most of the time?) you just can’t find what you need in a maternity version, so it’s good to know a few tricks for working around any sartorial bumps in the road. I’m hilarious.

In this post, I’m breaking down my strategies for finding pregnancy-friendly styles at your favorite retailers. It involves some strategic filtering and requires knowledge of specific keywords, which I detail below. But first, I should mention that this post focuses almost entirely on dresses, for strategic reasons…