There's a baby boom going on in the High Street for three York-based women. MAXINE GORDON reports.

NEVER has it been so fashionable to be pregnant. You can't open the pages of a newspaper or women's magazine without seeing some celebrity baring her huge tummy or cuddling her cherished new born. Madonna, Catherine Zeta Jones, Zoe Ball, Melinda Messenger, Kate Winslet, Ulrika Jonsson - they're all up to it, and by and large it's good news for women.

Gone are the days when mums-to-be were expected to wear a tent, give up their jobs and spend their pregnancy knitting a new wardrobe for baby.

Today, Mother Power is a force to be reckoned with, and yet many women complain that they are just not being catered for at this time in their lives. They can't find the maternity clothes they'd like to wear. And finding non-chain store clothes and toys for children is harder than ever.

But three new shops have just opened in the York area, in recognition of this gap in the motherhood market.

Expecting, in Gillygate, sells all sorts of maternity wear including lingerie. Just a stone's throw away is Soup Dragon, which sells a selection of toys and trendy clothes for tots. And over in Harrogate, an upmarket department store, Baby d, has opened selling everything from prams and pyjamas to cots and car seats.

Behind this baby boom of the business world are three York-based women, all mothers who faced the frustrations of High Street shopping for mum and baby goods. For Sarah Laycock, opening Baby d was the result of two years' hard work, during which she, hubby David and their four children Amy, six, James, four, Hetty, three and Harry, two, uprooted from their home in Essex to a new base at Bishopthorpe Road, York.

While overseeing the conversion of the three-storey art deco Baines Bros building in Cheltenham Mount, Harrogate, into Baby d, Sarah was also busy with a project closer to home: renovating their derelict Victorian home in York. "At first, we all had to camp in one room. It was a good year before it was all finished," she recalls.

Besides opening the store, a main reason for moving north was so Sarah and David could spend more time with their children.

The couple take it in turns to spend the morning with the youngsters, taking them to school and nursery in York, while the other manages the shop in Harrogate.

Too young for nursery, two-year-old Harry accompanies mum and dad to work, and even to meetings. With four children, Sarah knew exactly what Baby d should sell - all the things she had to hunt for herself while preparing for the latest arrival.

"What I wanted just wasn't on the market, and that has been confirmed by people coming into the new store and saying: 'I've been looking for years for a place like this'."

Knowing her own daughter was bored with 'plastic toys', Sara Easey was confident other parents would welcome her new shop Soup Dragon.

"We don't sell plastic, just good old- fashioned wooden toys," explains Sara. Also on sale are super-fashionable kids and baby clothes up to eight years and a range of fun, fancy dress-wear. "It is a niche market," admits Sara, who has just moved with husband Philippe and daughter Aimee, five, from Leeds to Fishergate, in York.

At Soup Dragon, dolls' houses and castles stand next to a pocket money section, with prices ranging from £100 to £1. The clothes, says Sara, are of a similar price to those in High Street chain Gap.

A few doors away, Heather Booth has opened Expecting, selling maternity clothes - smart, casual, evening wear and lingerie, complete with a bra-fitting service.

Heather has toyed with the idea of opening such a shop since struggling to find clothes when she was pregnant with her son Jack, now two.

She believes women can boost their confidence during pregnancy by wearing properly-fitting clothes rather than just buying a larger size or borrowing their other half's shirts.

"The shoulders end up half-way down their arms and they look bigger all over," says Heather. "It takes their femininity away. When they wear maternity clothes, they notice everything goes down - except the bump. They realise it is just their tummy that is growing and that they are not fat.

"Pregnancy is the most lovely condition to be in, it's so feminine and nice, yet most women don't feel it because they haven't got the clothes to make them feel it and they lose confidence."