Some Kind of Wonderland

You and your husband can swear “We’ll NEVER own a minivan.” And you’ll mean it — those big behemoths that are mostly (with few exceptions) filled with crap like honor roll stickers and broken sunglasses and a distracted mom on a cell phone. Right!, you think. But one morning, your husband will say, “I found a great minivan online, used, we could buy.” And you’ll weep internally for all the cool points that just got knocked out of your marriage.

(We’re not getting a minivan right now. I can’t handle that. But those words DID come out of his mouth.)

You can rub your baby belly and say, “I’ll NEVER listen to baby music. Nope, I’m gonna start them out right with some Dylan, some Billy Joel, some Modest Mouse.” But then you’re doing dishes one day, and you’ve got a track from Kenny Loggins’ “Return to Pooh Corner” in your head, and the phrase “Christopher Robin and I walked along under branches lit up by the mooooon …” escapes from your mouth quicker than you can spin around to make sure no one was listening.

And, you can swear “I’ll NEVER wear mom jeans” as you stick your thumbs in the pockets of your low-rise jeans and you sway your non-childbearing hips and beam over how cool you are in your flared-leg pants. Look at you! All hip and un-mommish. Seriously, just look at you!

Nine months later, you’ll drag your postpartum body in a store and discover this: There are no such things as mom jeans. Sure there are high-rise, tight, ankle-hugging jeans in a nice acid wash. But those wouldn’t be mom jeans without the mom to put in them, would they?

It doesn’t matter the cut or the style of the jean, anyhow, I’ve discovered. It’s YOUR BODY that’s betrayed you. It’s your hips and pelvis that have changed their entire locations. You can’t get a seven-pound baby out without making some permanent adjustments to bones and joints.

Unless you’re one of those urban legends who left the hospital in your skinny jeans (and if so, I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT), you’ll be surprised at the intensity of your new desire to tuck your new phantom baby pouch under something, anything!, so you won’t have a lumpy midsection. You find a pair that don’t make your butt look a half-mile long and you duck to the counter to buy them, your face red with frustration at your former self.

And the first time you put them on, you’ll gasp and listen closely to your belly button: “WELL HELLO THERE, JEANS! What are you doing up here?” But what did your belly button ever do besides pop out during month nine, anyhow? Crisis solved, and another “I will never” gets shot down.