Learning To Wear Pants Again

There's nothing worse than shopping for a pair of jeans. That's why, when you find "the ones", the ones that fit like a dream and make you forget about every flaw beneath them, you buy them - you covet them - and you wear the what out of them.

This is precisely what I did with my maternity jeans and essentially what I do with every new accessory or article of clothing I acquire.

As a general rule though, I only like to hang on to a pair of jeans until they've fallen apart, until they've weathered six seasons, or until I'm brave enough to look for a new pair, whichever comes first. That said, when the elastic waist went in my maternity jeans after only a few months, I took them to a seamstress for "reinforcing" and prided myself on my frugality. 

But when two of my girlfriends announced their pregnancies and, upon probing, that neither of them were wearing maternity clothes, I realized that I was in my fourth post-pregnancy trimester and still sporting mine.

Shortly afterwards, I also realized that my maternity jeans had already seen two falls and two winters and were very close to seeing two springs. Their shelf life (or leg life, so to speak) was coming to an end. In fact, it should have come to an end months ago based on the simple fact that I was no longer pregnant. But I just wasn't ready to let them go. They had literally been with me through thick and thinner. When I gained 50-plus pounds during my pregnancy, those jeans still fit like a dream. And when I lost 35 of those 50-plus pounds after Elizabeth was born, those jeans still made me forget about every flaw beneath them, which now included a five-inch Caesarian scar and a so-called kangaroo pouch.

The time had come for me to either swallow my pride and buy a pair of Size 12s (I could only hope) or try on my "old" (non-maternity) jeans and hope for the best. And because spending money when I'm not making any is a lot more difficult than I imagined it to be, I opted for the latter.

So one morning, sitting on the fence between optimism and pessimism, yet fully prepared for an emotional meltdown, I took a trip to the pre-pregnancy side of my closet. I was pleasantly shocked. Not only had I managed to squeeze into my beloved, discounted Anthropologie jeans, but I had also managed to button and zip them up with minimal discomfort, meaning minimal "muffin-top". It was a good day, muffin-top and all.

Soon after though, I realized I had a problem. And it wasn't getting my jeans on. It was taking them off that was raising some red flags. When nature called, I found myself trying to pull my jeans down over my hips, just like I had done with my maternity jeans. I had actually forgotten how to wear pants, or at least how to take them off. I had been conditioned to completely disregard the existence of two universal facets of the pant: the button and the zipper.

There are many things I prepared myself for as a new mom. Learning to wear pants again wasn't one of them. And so, as Elizabeth is learning to do "big-girl" things, so am I. And like most of the waves that motherhood brings, you just have to learn to ride them, even if doing so means (almost) getting your pants wet. Lucky for me, skirt season is just around the corner!