Pieces of Parenthood # 4: Good-bye Old Friends

by Sharon Tjaden-Glass

A woman’s best friend in pregnancy isn’t ice cream. Or pickles. Or brownies. Or whatever other non-sense popular media tells you.

No. Her best friend is stretchy pants.

And I was lucky enough to have two best friends.

 

 

They weren’t yoga pants.

They weren’t maternity pants.

They were actually Victoria’s Secret Pillowtalk Pajamas.

These pants were truly made of magic and grace. Magic, because they transformed from Smalls to Ex-Larges, right along with me. Grace, because they didn’t make me feel like any of these changes were inconvenient for them. They moved out of the way. They said, Oh, excuse me for not accommodating you more quickly. Here you go. 

I wore them so much they frayed at the bottom hems.

I wore them mostly around the house.

I admit, I may have worn them to the gas station.

Maybe also Target.

Maybe.

***

I’m now about 8 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight (which means I’m 37 pounds lighter than my last days of pregnancy. Woot.) One more inch off my hips and I’ll be back in my pre-pregnancy pants and a whole new section of my wardrobe opens back up.

When it’s all stacked and folded like this, it feels like a geological record of the last 21 months of my life.

 

So I say good-bye.

Good-bye to all the postpartum clothes that have served me in all the hard In-Between Phases of transformation.

All those months of looking in the mirror

and not seeing myself at all

and then not really seeing myself

and then not quite seeing myself

and then kind of seeing myself

and then

quite suddenly

seeing that first glimpse of the the version of me that I used to be