Since all women dressed baggy in the dark ages, maternity wear probably existed before it actually had the label “maternity wear”. It was simply known as baggy clothes.

Real maternity wear, in the sense that we know it today, first seemed to appear in the middle of the 19th century, which was not very surprising since the puritan male was in charge of much of the modern world, and even though they all were keenly aware that pregnancy existed, and that more often than not they were “part of the cause” of it, as in traditional puritan sense, what was reality and what was to be seen were often two very different things.

However, in the Georgian period, probably thanks to reformers like Rousseau, such dresses were worn without being labeled “maternity-wear” and would “grow or stretch, with the pregnant woman, at every stage of pregnancy. Keep in mind, only the affluent could afford such attire, and the peasantry remained in their usual baggy attire. Most were not aware of they were mothers-to-be or not.