MamaHack: Nursing Bras

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I’m a fairly new mama who has recently undergone the insanity that comes with your first baby. I remember looking at PapaHacks and calmly explaining to him that the hospital was obviously an irresponsible institution if they were willing to send that fragile little human being home with us . . . But, at that point, there was no putting her back where she came from, and we just had to muddle through.

The next few weeks were a fog of trying to learn how to nurse, figuring out how to do things one handed, and crying (me more than the baby, if you want to know the truth). As time went by, however, I did find a few things that have made the process easier. Because I’m a bit of a geek, I’ve coined these shortcuts “MamaHacks,” and I’d like to share some of them with you.

Today I post a MamaHack that has actually saved me a lot of time. It’s also kept me from being a particularly stinky mama. It has to do with nursing bras.

Never in my life have I worn a bra continuously for this amount of time. Truth be told, the “girls” have always been . . . um . . . smallish, so I could sort of choose whether or not I wanted to wear one. That is so not the case anymore. I’m currently sporting a couple of D-cups, and I’m frankly kind of pleased and amused by them all at once.

On the other hand, the whole wearing a bra 24-7 got old quickly. I started out with only two nursing bras, which made things even trickier. That’s how this whole thing started. If I didn’t do a load of laundry every single morning, I was out of luck for a clean bra. There was not a big chance I was going to be washing clothes every day. The baby’s six months old, and I still don’t wash laundry every day.

There is something that I wash every day, though. My body. No matter what is going on in the world, I manage to find myself at least ten minutes a day to shower. So, I started taking my nursing bras right in with me. I slap a little Ivory or even some shampoo on the fabric, work it around, rinse, and hang over the shower rod.

When I get out, there’s a nice dry bra hanging there from yesterday’s shower. It’s all ready to go, and by the time I shower the next day, today’s bra will be dry. It’s recommended to wash bras by hand anyway, so I’m theoretically adding to the life of my garment, too.