“A Drawer Full of Jeans” – By Bethany Broderick

I return home from my six-week postpartum appointment and stare down the fourth drawer of my dresser. Should I do it? 

It’s been more than six months since I shimmied into a pair of jeans—right before everything shut down because of a global pandemic. Since then, I’ve rotated wearing the same two pairs of forgiving black maternity leggings. Now that we’re starting to have more in-person (but socially distant) interactions with friends and family, I wonder if I should go back to wearing jeans. In a  rare hour when both kids are napping, I find myself glaring at my dresser and daring myself to open the drawer. 

I tug the old bronze handle; the drawer sticks and moans from months of neglect. I lift it up,  jiggle a little, and pull hard to finally coax it open. Lined up neatly in rows (thanks to my second trimester Marie Kondo kick) are more than a dozen pairs of jeans. Light denim, dark denim,  black, white. Gap, Loft, Target. Size 4 to size 12. Each representing a different time in my life along with different styles and body shapes. Each representing a different version of me. 

I still haven’t gotten rid of my favorite pair of jeans from college. I’m not sure if it’s due to nostalgia or to the hope that one day they will again slip over my childbearing hips. My fingers trace the stitching on the back pocket of the soft, worn American Eagle denim—low on the hips, wide on the ankles, with a well-placed tear at the knee. 

These jeans are a decade old, yet the girl who wore them every day to class seems to have existed a lifetime ago. Alone in her tiny gray dorm room, she struggled to figure out who she was as a student, a friend, a girlfriend, and a woman. She thought a pair of trendy jeans would help her evolve into the fashionable, independent woman she desperately wanted to be. She sacrificed more than a few meals to pay for a pair of on-brand jeans, but the price seemed worth it to feel comfortable in her skin and in her plans for the future. 

I laugh away the flood of college memories as I continue to sort through the jeans like a filing cabinet. My hand falls on another favorite pair, with a tag reading “Loft Petite Four.” I  remember my best friend handing me this pair of jeans over the dressing room door as she carefully curated my “business casual” wardrobe.  

The girl who tried on these jeans wanted more than a new wardrobe for her first job after graduate school; she wanted a new identity. She had driven five hours across the state for an all-day shopping trip, hoping her friend’s finely-tuned taste would make her feel more self-assured about this life transition from classroom to boardroom. She was desperate to prove herself in a setting where a paycheck, not just a grade, was affected by her performance. 

She believed A-line skirts, ruffled blouses, and dark wash skinny jeans would conceal her fear of failure, transforming her into a confident working woman.

The memory makes me pause to text my friend for suggestions on growing my “mom wardrobe,” then I return to the most promising row of jeans. Several pairs of barely-worn Target brand jeans lay folded in a tidy row. They are all the same style and wash but in multiple sizes, evidence of my postpartum body journey after my firstborn child. Each pair of jeans in a smaller size was a reward celebrating my supposed return to my pre-pregnancy body.

 I select the first pair in the row and recall buying them late one Monday night at Target. 

*** 

“We’ll be back soon; I just need to get a pair of pants and a few shirts,” I told my mother-in-law as my husband and I left our six-week-old daughter at home for the first time. Expecting to feel excited about this hour of freedom, I instead found myself sobbing when my husband pulled into the Target parking lot. After a few minutes, I sniffled and asked my husband the question I  couldn’t get out of my mind, “How am I going to do this?” 

“This” encapsulated a lot of things. I was going back to work the next week and had made the mistake of trying on my business wardrobe earlier that day. Nothing fit. It was yet another disappointment in my postpartum journey. Despite the piles of highlighted books, the bookmarked blog articles, and the notes from my mom friends, my confidence as a mother had continued to plummet. 

My daughter struggled to gain weight even as I struggled to lose it. Each sleepless night I attempted to soothe her unending cries, I wondered if I wasn’t doing enough for her, if I wasn’t enough of a mother for her. How could I buy clothes for this new mother, this new woman, when I wasn’t even sure who she was yet? 

Hesitant about what to do with this sudden hormonal release, my husband handed me a Chick-fil-A napkin from the console, drew me to his chest, and let sobs subside before gently asking,  “Do you still want to go inside?” 

I nodded, wiping away my tears, and we walked into Target with his arm around me for support. My eyes fell on the racks at the front of the store holding seasonal items, reminding me that Mother’s Day was next weekend. The shelves were full of fake flowers, picture frames, and bright stationery, but what made me pause was a white latte mug covered with golden letters spelling, “Mother.”

I stopped to pick up the cup, running my fingers along the beautiful lettering against the smooth ceramic. I wondered if I would ever truly feel like a mother, being able to confidently hold such a label in my hands and in my heart. My husband’s gentle reminder that we had to get back to a hungry baby snapped me out of my contemplation. Putting the mug down, I steeled myself for the daunting racks of women’s clothing ahead. 

The next hour in the hot dressing room did nothing to improve my morale. Each time I stared into the oversized mirror under poor lighting and peeled off another ill-fitting shirt, I felt another level of my self-confidence fall away. Exasperated, I finally threw a pair of jeans twice the size I had worn before pregnancy and a few flowy tops into the shopping cart.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I grumbled to myself, not sure whether I mean life in general or just trying on more jeans. I combed my fingers through my frizzy postpartum hair and muttered to  my husband, “Let’s go home.” 

As I unloaded the clothing, nursing pads, and a large bag of coffee onto the conveyor belt, I  realized my husband wasn’t there. I turned around to see him running back to our checkout line with something in his hands. He placed the white latte mug on top of the pair of jeans and smiled at me. 

“You’re a great mom,” he whispered and squeezed my shoulder. With a hormonal deluge threatening the corners of my eyes, I picked up the mug once more. A reminder of the woman and mother I was becoming. 

A reminder I had a greater identity than a jean size. 

*** 

I shake my head to bring myself back to the task at hand—figuring out what pair of pants will best fit this “new” me, six weeks postpartum with my second child. I start with the largest size of jeans, and while they fit in the hips, they are too big in the thighs. I try a size down; they fit nicely on my legs but won’t even zip up over my belly. After testing several more pairs, I stare at the mirror daring myself to put on another. 

Somehow slipping in and out of these old pairs of jeans is causing an identity crisis. Am I the independent college girl wearing American Eagle? Or the confident working woman in Loft denim? Or am I the first-time mom buying a cheap pair of Target jeans in hopes I won’t have to wear that double-digit size for too long? Is the reason none of these jeans fit me because I am not these women anymore? 

Only jeans and swimsuits can send a woman down such a black hole of existentialism. 

I neatly fold the mound of discarded denim, close the fourth drawer, and slip again into my favorite postpartum leggings. I sigh and release the air and anxiety I have been holding with each successive pair of jeans. I relax back in the black cotton and spandex that support me as I  wipe peanut butter off my toddler daughter’s mouth while also bouncing my baby boy. I’m soothed by their simultaneous scent of baby soap and spit-up. I’m secure as they hold me together but also give me room to breathe. I’m comfortable in these, and in who I now am as a  mother, and more importantly, as a woman. 

Those jeans and the girls who wore them are a part of my story, but with each year that I gain life experience and a few more pounds, I grow out of them. With one last glance in the mirror, I  take in my ensemble: black leggings spotted with the remains of the day, a striped, gray t-shirt,  front tucked, an oversized rust-colored cardigan, and my coziest moccasin slippers. 

I smile at myself  and take a sip of coffee from a mug with faded golden letters declaring me a “mother.” I’m content with the woman I see in the mirror, not needing to return to the drawer full of jeans again.

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