Feeding is harder than you expected. Start with what you wear.

Nobody warns you how much of early feeding is a clothing problem. Whether the feed itself goes well depends on things a shopping guide cannot help with — latch, supply, support from someone who knows what they are looking at. But a startling amount of the misery in the first six weeks comes from wearing the wrong bra at 3am, having two of something you needed six of, or trying to pump while holding two flanges in place with your elbows.

This hub is about that layer. It is deliberately not about whether to breastfeed, and it is not a substitute for a lactation consultant or your own midwife.

Solve it in this order

First, sleep bras. In the first fortnight you will be feeding lying down, at night, half-conscious, and probably leaking. What you want is soft, wireless, stretchy enough to accommodate a size change overnight, and openable without looking. Clips are fiddly in the dark; pull-aside and wrap-front styles are easier. Buy more of these than you think and buy them cheap, because they will be washed constantly.

Second, one or two day bras with real support. Once you are leaving the house, you want structure. This is where fit stops being optional, because an ill-fitting bra pressing on a duct is a genuine problem rather than a comfort complaint. If you are above a D cup, look specifically at brands that size by band and cup rather than S/M/L — the letter-sized bras simply run out of room.

Third, pumping, if you are pumping. A hands-free pumping bra is the difference between pumping being a 20-minute dead stop and being something you do while answering an email. If you are exclusively pumping, buy a dedicated pumping bra rather than a combination one; if you are pumping occasionally, the combination pump-and-nurse styles are genuinely good and save you a change.

Fourth, position support. A feeding pillow is not essential and plenty of people use a folded duvet. What a good one does is hold a height under the baby's weight, which ordinary pillows do not, and that height is what stops you hunching forward into the shoulder and neck pain that defines week three. The firm, buckled designs hold position best; the soft C-shapes compress.

Timing: when to buy

The useful window for nursing bras is the last few weeks of pregnancy, not earlier and not after. Buy at 20 weeks and your rib cage has not finished expanding. Wait until the baby arrives and you are ordering bras from a sofa while engorged, which is both the worst time to judge fit and the time you most need one. Around 36 weeks, buying stretchy wireless styles that tolerate a couple of sizes of change, is the compromise that works.

What decides the price

Size range and construction. A seamless S-to-XL bralette is cheap because it is one pattern graded four times. A bra cut in band-and-cup sizes through an H or K cup is a different manufacturing problem and costs accordingly — and if you need it, the cheap one is not a saving. After that you are paying for fabric (cotton and Tencel over polyester, which matters when you are sleeping in it), for clip quality, and for pumping compatibility.

The mistake almost everyone makes

Buying two. Two is the right number of bras for a normal week and the wrong number for a week with leaking, spit-up and a wash cycle you cannot reliably run. The quantities page in this hub works through it properly, but the short version is that sleep bras and day bras have very different right answers, and most people under-buy the first and over-buy the second.

Start with the nursing bra comparison, or when to buy nursing bras if you are still pregnant and trying to get the timing right.