It’s not really my colour actually. Well it is, blue brings out the colour of my eyes so people say, but this blue is bright, raunchy, loud. I think I read in a magazine at some point in my teens that as a pale person I should stick to more earthy colours so as to not appear washed out but this bra is far from earthy.
The blue is brighter than cobalt, lighter but not cyan. It has the luminescence of the colour of a highlighter pen, but with more depth - more blueness. I can’t think of a colour in nature that matches it.
Despite the boldness of its colour the lace is delicate, its floral pattern intricate, pronounced by the equally striking magenta colour underneath.
It’s gorgeous, but it isn’t very me.
That was exactly the reason I bought it. I wasn’t me at the time. I didn’t know who I was. When I saw it online, my stomach flipped with excitement at the thought of that bra being mine, or perhaps me being like that bra, and I thought, fuck it. Who am I anyway?
I had just birthed a baby. My body was tired and stretched, none of my clothes fitted. I had made my boobs redundant from the one job they were made for. They were useless. They needed another purpose. They needed to be sexy. So in the weeks after I gave up breastfeeding my son, I went bra shopping.
Now another son later and I’m trying on this bra amongst others and feeling a little deflated. I am literally deflated. My boobs have shrunk. Nothing fits.
I love my body for what it has been able to achieve. Despite difficulty breastfeeding my first son, I fed my second son exclusively for the first six months and after that I was the only source of milk he would take despite our best efforts. I hated breastfeeding in the end. I was overwhelmed and fed up of being the only one who could put him to bed, or soothe him when he was inconsolable. I became his dummy and I had not agreed to be. The end of breastfeeding him was abrupt. I hadn’t intended it to be, but it was in everyone’s best interests. We were tired and at sixteen months in, we decided it could not go on any longer. Despite the memory of that time, the feelings of resentment, feeling trapped, exhaustion and giving up hope, I can still appreciate that my body did an amazing thing.
It’s crazy in pregnancy how your body adapts. It is easy to love it as you bloom, and blossom the baby growing inside you, you can literally feel the life underneath your skin; it’s amazing (except when they keep you up at night and then it’s not..). People shower you with compliments, that you are glowing - it could be the bump or more likely, the endless good hair days thanks to pregnancy hormones. The changes feel good.
I also had a very positive experience of childbirth. My sons were both born without intervention and it felt like my body was expelling the baby in an almost animalistic way. I growled and I grunted. I made sounds I never thought I could make; I didn’t recognise myself. I experienced the power of it, each surge beyond my control and I was in awe as the baby seemed to push its own way out of me.
But once I had given birth and the hormones had worn off, especially the second time, the shimmer of all my body had achieved in childbirth, pregnancy and beyond was forgotten as my wobbly belly and saggy boobs lay in what was essentially the aftermath. Their lack of firmness a sign that they aren’t useful anymore: deflated and empty.
What upsets me about this particular bra is that I barely wore it. If I ever felt sexy in it, it wasn’t for very long.
If we’re honest most of us spent 2020/2021 in loungewear and as a new mum with a small baby I was no different. I wore maternity bras with no underwire, then nursing bras, soft bras fitted with clips on the straps for easy access for feeding long after my milk had dried up. They were comfortable.
I kept this bra for years. It has been waiting but what for? It is time to let it go.
I never became this vision of myself I saw in the months that followed my first experiences of childbirth and breastfeeding. In the short window of time where I was a new mum and I’d gone back to work, I got my life back - the time I was allegedly me again, I barely wore it. Then, I became pregnant again, giving my body over yet again to build life - to house another baby - my body no longer mine.
Looking back buying that bra was a sign that I didn’t know myself - that I wanted to be someone else. I will take it to a charity shop now not just because it no longer fits, but because I know that this bra isn’t me, not the me right now and I don’t want it to be.
I believe our identities are ever changing and evolving and I feel especially changed during these years since having my children - the journey of matrescence - the transitional period of becoming a mother. This is a process which probably is still ongoing, but I feel I am finding myself slowly.
The evidence of this bra still taking up space in my drawer, though, is uncomfortable to me. It makes me question whether I am through that period yet - do I know who I am yet? Am I still holding on to becoming something else?
I think at times I do still feel a little lost. Like I am living a life that isn’t my own. A life that feels so different from the one I was living a few years ago, a life as a mother that is so different from what I had imagined. As I enter the fifth year of motherhood I am confident though that I am getting there. I think knowing that we don’t intend to have any more children and that I am no longer breastfeeding - my body is now mine again. Gradually, too, with the eldest going to school in September, I will be able to reclaim my career again, which I have started to do in small ways this year. I am piecing myself back together, albeit slowly.
Becoming a mother stripped me of my identity, and as with many mothers it’s a process that has taken a long time to journey through but I think I am getting there. I am starting to pick up old pieces and discard some of those pieces in favour of new ones, piece by piece, to build a new me.
If this resonated with you, I would love you to join me in the comments, I love to hear your experiences.
Do you feel like you have made it out of matrescence?
Did you feel you have reclaimed parts of yourself from before children?
Or do you feel like you are settling into a new you?
Ahh I love the sound of the blue bra...
I feel like I could write an essay on bras in motherhood and more generally underwear - at the moment I’m inberween on everything underwear and feel something new emerging...
Oooooh bras.... I have such a complex relationship with them. I can’t let go of the nursing bras and tops... even though BF ended for me and I will never use them again. I can’t seem to let that version of me... the breastfeeding mother... go yet. We move and shift through so many seasons and identities don’t we?!?
I feel like I have had many versions of the blue bra you speak or. Jeans. The little black dress I had as an 18 year old and clung to until well into my 30s even though it was a past version of me. Clothes hold so much!
I felt like I was emerging from the initial gritty phases of Matrescence just before I got pregnant with Vesper. And now I’m back in this second Matrescence all over again. It’s different though.
Loved reading this Kylie, thank you xxx