When Janelle Cooke, of Carbondale, Ill., had her first child 10 years ago, dressing for work was no problem. As a floor nurse on an orthopedic ward, she just bought bigger smocks and enough maternity scrubs to last a few days before she had to do laundry. A year ago, when she found she was pregnant with her second child, her job had changed quite a bit and her wardrobe had to, too.

In the decade between the birth of her two children, Cooke had earned her master's degree in business administration and was working as an assistant administrator for a large healthcare system. "It's important to make a professional impression at all times in this job, not only for the doctors that we work with on a day to day basis, but for the public relations side as well," she says. "Smocks and leggings were definitely not going to cut it this time."

Before she actually had to do any maternity shopping, Cooke was a little worried about what she would find. Her memories of maternity wear with her first child were of big shirts printed with "baby on board" jokes or just big shirts that were very plain. Imagine her surprise to find that maternity fashion is no longer an oxymoron.

Jennifer Strom Simonte, owner and CEO of Belly Dance Maternity, says today's trend is clothes a women would wear if she weren't pregnant. According to Simonte, today's fashion approach is to accent the pregnancy and flatter the rest of the figure. "Women want to wear the same types of things they wore before they got pregnant," she says. "The goal of every designer I carry is to allow women to continue to indulge their sense of style while they're expecting."

Denise Kalinowski, junior designer at babystyle, an online store devoted to maternity and baby fashions, agrees that fitted clothes are important in pregnancy so the woman doesn't look big all over. "This has been a consistent trend for the past few years, because clothes look better more fitted so they show off that a woman is pregnant," says Kalinowski. "Too much extra fabric actually makes the pregnant silhouette look large and bulky."

Regardless of how fashion-conscious a woman is, the fact is that she's only pregnant for nine months, so she also wants to be practical and finance conscious. Simonte suggests purchasing maternity clothes as soon as possible in the pregnancy – rather than just buying "regular" clothes in the next size up – so they can be worn as long as possible. The way maternity clothes fit has changed, and many are made to last from early pregnancy through the postpartum period. She also says that more maternity clothes are equipped with adjustable waistbands, rather than the old-fashioned panel, which allows the clothes to grow with the pregnancy.

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