A couple good friends informed me last week that my wardrobe is out of date — particularly a pair of fleece-lined clogs I wear with pretty much everything.

"They just scream ... I'm a mom," my friend said.

At first this seriously offended me, mostly because I realized it was true. I never wore clogs before I got pregnant, but somehow when I was seven months pregnant with water-retaining feet resembling Play-Doh bulging out of my high heels, clogs seemed like an ingenious idea.

Fast forward 20 months later and I've never taken them off.

As I assessed my outfit further, I made some startling discoveries. First, there was the sweat shirt with unraveled hoodie strings because my daughter, Nicole, liked to chew on them while she was teething.

Next, I noticed the jeans that are tattered at the heels and in no way actually fit me. They are simply the only jeans that I don't have to unbutton when I drive or eat more than a handful of Cheerios.

And lastly, there was my hair. It's not pretty long, just long because who has time to get a haircut with an 18-month-old child?

As my friend would say, it just screams, "I'm a mom!"

And for most first-time moms — and maybe all moms — there are plenty of these telltale signs that we are mothers.

Most of the signs are physical, like my unsightly ensemble. In particular, new moms have an impossible time finding pants that don't highlight the muffin-top belly or make you tug your shirt down every time you bend to pick up a sippy cup. We're stuck somewhere between settling for a muumuu and squeezing on our prepregnancy pants (which sit in our closet untouched because discarding them is admitting defeat).

Don't lie — we all wear a remnant maternity skirt or stretchy pants from time to time and hope no one notices the elastic waistband.

And even if you could find a pair of jeans that fit, who can go shopping with a toddler? Let's just say the good people at Kohl's have seen me running through the dressing room in my underwear more than once.

But the signs that scream "I'm a mom!" aren't just physical. You can also spot a first-time mom by the look in her eye.

Exhausted, yes. Bewildered, yes. But the surefire sign is that look of suspicion, warily eyeing old women who kiss her baby and that man who looks way too old to just be hanging out at a park in the middle of the day.

If you can't catch the wild look in her eye, you surely won't miss the fact that her newborn infant will always have a blanket tightly wrapped around its car seat. This is the new mom's way of saying, "What baby? There's no baby under here. Keep moving."