Belle Up: Mount Greenwood Maternity Store Outfits Stylish Expectant Mothers

By Christine Schmidt

It takes a village to raise a child. And Jamenda McCoy is leading that village.

As the owner of maternity store Belle Up, McCoy wanted to help mothers-to-be look and feel stylish during their pregnancies when she opened it in December 2009.

“When I first opened this store, I envisioned it being a community store. It’s more than just fashion. It’s bigger than me, it’s bigger than you, bigger than each customer that comes in here. It’s really about the parenting experience and growth and making women feel good,” McCoy, a mother of two, said. “When Mom’s happy, the whole house is happy!”

In addition to maternity and non-maternity clothes, some of which McCoy designs herself, Belle Up offers classes and private shopping to better serve the needs of 
local expectant mothers.

“My primary goal with [personal shopping] is … to work in your closet with what you have and kind of add some key pieces, not just throw everything away,” McCoy said. “People tend to think in terms of ‘okay this is maternity clothes’ and ‘this is not maternity clothes.’ But that’s not true.”

The types of clothing that Belle Up offers is as varied as the kinds of classes that are taught there, including American Sign Language.
“We contacted a local ASL instructor and she teaches the class,” McCoy said. “The first series went off really well; we had about eight parent-baby groups.” The second session of the class began on June 8.

Parents can take classes at Belle Up ranging from breastfeeding and childhood nutrition to financial planning. “You don’t know what you don’t know, until you realize you don’t know it,” McCoy said. “Some of it is kind of self-intuitive and some 
of it is instinct and you have a baby and you’re a mom and you figure it out! Some of it we can help with along the way.”

Customers can also help other parents along the way—Belle Up now partners with the Bundle of Joy organization, which sets up diaper banks around the area to provide diapers to parents in homeless shelters and domestic shelters. Parents with extra diapers can deposit them in the yellow bin in Belle Up.

And the name?

 “It was one of my favorite things to do when I was pregnant. Everybody wants to put their feet up,” when they’re pregnant, McCoy said. “I just wanted to lay down and put my belly up!”

Belle Up is located at 3440 W. 111th Street and can be reached at (773) 233-2442 or on Facebook.