Today we went to the beach; A’s first time and my first attempt at bringing both kids solo (luckily Mac Daddy took an early Friday because I had to text him half an hour in to ask if he could please come help me!). Before we left I tried on the bikini set I had bought online, a high-waist deal, which made me feel really awful. So I dug into my closet and pulled out the other suit I recently purchased online — my first one-piece since the fashion industry invented tankinis.

There are a lot of cute one-pieces out there. Unfortunately I’m half an inch shy of six feet tall, and all of those cute one-pieces crawl up into places they should not crawl owing to my long torso. I loathe the idea of spending a lot of money on a bathing suit, but long torso suits are generally pricey. When I saw a super basic, black, one-piece, tank style, ‘modest coverage’ suit on Land’s End for half off I jumped.

It’s about as spunky as it sounds. I could probably, like, do water aerobics in it without it budging. It highlights my lack of butt. It squishes my post-partum chest into something that looks a lot smaller than it is. The sexiest part of it is the back that dips down to roughly where my bra would clasp. I actually felt kind of sheepish showing up at the beach — here I am, 29 years old, in my basic black mom suit.

However. When I needed to grab A and hustle to the edge of the water to talk to M about staying nearby? It didn’t move. When I was on hands and knees helping M build a sand turtle? I didn’t worry about what was slipping out of my suit. I guess there’s merit to the one-piece, because for the first time in a long time I wasn’t pulling and adjusting constantly.

Maybe when I get back down to my pre-baby weight I’ll splurge on something for tall women that’s actually cute. For now I’m going to rock the mom suit, embrace this season of my life, and not spend a lot of time caring about what I look like in Lycra!