The message I get more than any other, usually in the first fortnight: “Nothing from my pre-pregnancy closet fits, and I do not know what I am supposed to wear now.” Nobody tells you that the postpartum wardrobe is not one wardrobe. It is four, and they arrive in order: the first six weeks, the settling months, the months you start going out again, and the months life comes back. Each one asks something different of your clothes, and buying for the wrong stage is how a drawer of unworn nursing tops happens.

After my first I bought for month six in week one and wore none of it. After my second I bought for week one in month six and felt like I was still in the hospital. By the third I understood the stages well enough to buy almost nothing new: a few soft things for the beginning, and then a small set of ordinary pieces that opened and carried me from month three to the first birthday without a second thought.

This is that map. Four stages, what your body and your days are doing in each, what to wear, and the handful of pieces that carry through all of them. You will not need everything here. You will need to know which stage you are in, and then only that part.

Weeks one to six: soft, open, and dressed enough for the door

Your body is healing, your chest is a different size every few hours, and the front door opens more than you would like. The wardrobe for this stretch is small and soft: two wireless nursing bras you can sleep in, two clip-down nursing tanks, jersey joggers with a drawstring that sits below a scar, a wide soft trouser, a relaxed tee, a wrap top in a kind colour, a fine cardigan, one button-front lounge dress, slides you step into.

Nothing with a waistband that digs, nothing over the head, nothing that needs ironing. Ten nursing-friendly loungewear pieces for the first weeks is the full list, and the Soft Landing Capsule is the twenty-five outfits already laid out from it.

Weeks six to twelve: the same softness, one layer more dressed

You are moving more, the health visitor has stopped coming, and you start to want to look like a person on the school run or the first coffee out. Keep everything from the first stage and add the pieces that dress it up without changing how it opens: a button-front shirt worn open over the tank, dark jeans one size up with stretch, a wrap dress in jersey, white sneakers.

This is when the clip tank starts earning its place as a layer rather than underwear. Shirt open over it is the whole trick. If you are working from the kitchen table already, the Work From Home Lounge Capsule is this stage with the camera on.

Months three to six: the going-out months

Weddings, christenings, the first dinner, the return to work for many of us. Your body has settled into a shape, even if it is not the final one, and your days have places in them again. This is when a small capsule of ordinary pieces that all open pays for itself: the wrap top, the striped tee, the linen shirt, two bottoms with soft waists, one dress that buttons or wraps, a longline cardigan, a crossbody bag.

Buy for this stage, not before it. If you buy one thing new in the whole year, make it the dress that opens at the front; it is the wedding, the christening and the lunch in one hanger. The twelve-piece summer capsule or the fall one is this stage, worked out.

From the capsules

The Year Round Capsule

Two hundred nursing-friendly outfits from fifty-six pieces, fifty for every season, laid out and then worn. $29 once, yours to keep.

See the capsule →

Months six to twelve: life comes back, and the clothes should too

The baby is sitting, then crawling, then pulling up on your trouser leg. Feeds are fewer and faster, the leaks slow, and you start to want clothes that are about you rather than about access. Keep the capsule from the last stage and let it grow: a blazer worn open, a second dress, a pair of ankle boots, a coat that opens fully for the winter feeds in the car park.

This is also when the body changes again as feeds drop, so the soft waists stay. Do not buy the jeans from before yet. Buy the jeans for now. The Year Round Capsule is the whole of this stage across four seasons, two hundred outfits, every one opening.

The pieces that carry through all four

The clip tanks. The wireless bras. The wrap top, in whatever colour is kind to your face. The button-front shirt. The fine cardigan buttoned to the middle. The dark jeans in the size you are. The white sneakers. Seven things that are in the week-one wardrobe and still in the month-twelve one, which is why they are the only things worth buying well.

Everything else is stage-specific and can be cheap, borrowed or already in the drawer. Nine essentials and the formula under them is the long version of this paragraph.

What to do with the clothes from before

Box them, with the date on the box. Not the bag; the box. Some of it will fit in month nine and you will be glad. Most of it you will have forgotten, and that forgetting is the permission to let it go. Nobody should decide the fate of a wardrobe in the first year. The box means you do not have to.

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And the maternity pieces that still work: the stretch jersey dresses, the soft trousers, the wraps. Ten maternity pieces you can reuse postpartum says which ones.

The colour that carries the whole year

Whatever stage you are in, the thing nearest your face should be kind to it. For most of us that is a soft, slightly muted version of a colour we already like: dusty rose rather than hot pink, dusty blue rather than royal, burgundy rather than red. Pick it in week one and it will still be right at the first birthday, because tired is tired in every month.

First Look reads your colouring from one photo, free, if you want to know which family is yours before you buy anything for any stage.

Three babies taught me that the drawer of unworn nursing clothes is almost never a taste problem. It is a timing problem: the right piece bought for the wrong stage. Know which stage you are in, dress for that one, and let the seven pieces that carry through be the only ones you spend real money on. The rest will arrive when its month does.

If you want the whole year already laid out, the Year Round Capsule has it across four seasons, with three pictures of you in it on the house. If you want someone who knows which month you are in and what is in your closet to dress you each morning, that is Anah inside the Atelier. And if you are in the first weeks right now, start with the Soft Landing and nothing else.

One stage at a time. The focus is on you, mama.