Panic!

It is the bane of the pregnant woman to obsess over that which she has little or no control.  Is the baby moving enough?  Will the baby be okay or have some sort of problem?  Am I equipped to deal with a child who has a disorder or is down syndrome or some other life sentence?  Will I make it to 40 weeks or will I deliver pre-term?  Will I have to have a cesarean?  Will breastfeeding go smoothly?  Will it be a girl or a boy?  Did I zap that sliced turkey I ate the other day long enough in the microwave to kill the listeria?

 

This time, this week, I am obsessing about weight gain.  My doctor during Charles’ pregnancy was incredibly cool about the whole thing.  I gather he had seen thousands of pregnant women and knew I was doing just fine.  Even at the 50-lb mark, the only person who said anything was his associate doctor, a woman, who told me at 32 weeks that I was “getting fat” and needed to essentially knock it off. 

 

This time around, things are different, unknown.  I have a new doctor, our family doctor, who is reasonably chill but was still emphatic at my first appointment that I he’d “like to see me gain about 30 lbs.”  You guys.  I think I am more than halfway there already.  The downside to only having appointments every six weeks is that, without a scale in the house, I am relying on inaccurate scales at my in-laws’ house, the YMCA, and the office (we use that one for packages, of course).  They could all be a few pounds off.  But which direction?  And how much?

 

And while I am mostly sure that the baby is fine with this weight gain (after all, Charles turned out okay), I am panicking at the thought of chastisement from my doctor in a couple of weeks.  What’s he going to say?  It is so easy to make me feel horrible about myself on a normal day, but I am pregnant now!  It’s the easiest thing in the world to get me to burst into tears!

 

And then I start to think, what if it’s not good for the baby?  What if all Charles’ problems during his first 18 months could have been avoided if I had just stuck to a reasonable diet and kept the weight down?  Except, what is a reasonable diet?  Because here is how I eat:

-Bowl of cereal at 7 am, with a couple tablespoons of peanut butter eaten right from the jar because it’s my jar and otherwise I can’t choke my prenatal vitamin down

-Apple at 9:30 am

-Lunch at 10:30 am, usually a portion of leftovers from the night before

-snack at 2 pm, a granola bar or yogurt or chips and salsa

-another snack at 4 pm

-Dinner at 5:30 pm

 

I don’t usually snack after dinner because I am full and the evening is when I feel sick.  I drink lots of water and watered-down juice, and every meal has some sort of vegetable accompanying it.  And I just look at this list and think, wow, that’s a really reasonable diet.  For someone who isn’t pregnant!  Maybe I eat lunch too early, which causes me to have an extra snack in the afternoon, but overall, I think I do pretty well.  I avoid sweets (mostly because they just don’t interest me) (except for last night when I asked Tony to get vanilla ice cream on his way home from work so I could have a milkshake) (but I only made one, and a milkshake once in awhile isn’t excessive, right?).  Oh, God.  What if I get gestational diabetes?  I don’t know if I can handle it!

 

I am starting to exercise more – I just made a promise to myself that I would either take a walk or go to the gym every afternoon.  Today is looking like a gym day because it’s raining.  That’s got to help, right?  Right?

 

Oh, wow, I just feel like I suck at this whole pregnancy thing.  Not only and I super sick and cranky because of it, but I am tired and mega fat, too.  How does a person gain so much – perhaps 10 lbs – in a month?  I didn’t eat enough in the past month to make this happen!  I swear!