You’ll Find You Get What You Need
The season is changing—both literally and figuratively—and I’m doing my best to keep up with it, starting with my closet. I begin pulling pieces and since Zoey is our last baby, the days of saving my bump-friendly clothes for next time are officially over.
I start a pile of things to pass along to a pregnant friend. I let go of skirts, dresses, and tops, but pause when I get to my maternity jeans, which are well-worn and sporting a tiny coffee stain on the right leg that I never did manage to get out.
I think back to how I reluctantly hit purchase in the Old Navy app five years ago. What I wanted was maternity denim from Madewell, where I worked at the time, but I settled for Old Navy because it’s what I could afford on my minimum wage income.
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I made every effort to avoid buying maternity clothes, choosing to fiddle with belly bands and hair ties to keep my jeans from falling. My jeans represented me, and when I felt like I was losing my grip on my body, my goals, and who I was, I clung to my denim.
Embracing maternity clothes meant admitting I was, in fact, changing.
I didn’t want to love these jeans. I hoped that they would be awful because then I might be able to justify spending over $100 on denim I would wear for the last three months of my pregnancy (and hopefully if/when I got pregnant again). What I got was the best damn pair of maternity jeans. The elastic panel supported my belly while I worked long floor shifts during the holiday season. The denim had zero distressing and a flattering cut. They weren’t too long for my 5’1” legs.
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How does that song go? You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you’ll find, you get what you need.
I was so scared to lose myself to motherhood. I hoped a baby would easily fall into my pace of life because then I might be able to justify leaving my job to hack it as a content creator (spoiler: that life isn’t for me either). What I got was the baby I needed: a little boy who demanded I change from the insecure, people-pleasing, perfectionist I had been raised to be into a person who could trust herself, communicate her needs, and embrace the mess of being someone’s mother.
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I gingerly fold the jeans one last time, exactly the way I learned to fold denim at that retail job. I put them in a bag for my friend.
When I see her next, she points at the jeans she’s wearing and tells me how much she loves them. We bond over how they’re the most comfortable maternity jeans ever and I brag that they’ve seen me through all three of my pregnancies.
If five years ago, you told me I would be waxing poetic about my Old Navy maternity jeans, I wouldn’t have believed you. Yet here I am, a mom of three, reminiscing about the denim that saw me through the most transformative season of my life so far—and wondering which jeans will carry me through this next chapter of motherhood.
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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Cheers!".
