Some Days are Better than Others

For a few weeks, I have been in denial about just how fat I’ve become.  Partly, I’m sure, because when I’m looking for affirmation and fishing for compliments, my husband and brother always oblige.  “You’re not fat, you’re pregnant!” they’ll, say.  Neither of them really say that I look good, they just try to imply that I shouldn’t worry. 

 

Impossible.  How can a girl in our society not worry about her weight?

 

I tore my jeans this morning.  I wiggled into the jeans that I wore without trouble just this past weekend (they had been newly washed yesterday, so the part of my brain that specializes in denial has been telling me all morning that jeans always shrink back in the wash and get bigger after you wear them awhile), and just as I got them to my hips, R-I-I-I-I-P!  I am too fat IN MY HIPS for them anymore.  My thighs, my butt… all are getting larger by the day. 

 

Yes, I know I am supposed to gain weight, but I am already 40 lbs up from pre-pregnancy (5 lbs over the recommended weight gain range and 10 lbs over where my doctor said he wanted to see me) and I have, at minimum, 6 weeks to go (to gain more, that is).  And the weight gain is not in my belly, it is in my thighs, my butt, my hips, my arms, my face, my feet, my legs.  Oh, and my under-belly, that part that becomes that hideous mom-belly, highlighted by mom-jeans, just above your pelvic bone.  Gross!

 

So yeah, with six weeks to go, I need to go shopping.  Again.  Because, as I sit here in my other size-M maternity jeans, I am unwilling to kid myself about fit any longer.  These alternative jeans are tight as well.  Time to go up to a size Large, something I swore I wouldn’t do. 

 

I try to eat well, I really do.  Cereal with yogurt and herbal tea for breakfast… and then I go off the rails.  By 9:30, I am hungry again, so I eat an apple, and then a muffin, and then a granola bar, and then by 11 or 11:30, I am hungry for lunch.  Lunch is often leftovers.  Then I slow down a bit, and snack after I do my workout (yes, I still go to the gym 3 times a week and do a workout video at home the other days – the weight gain is in spite of the working out!), and then eat a smallish dinner, and then snack again before bedtime.  I am hungry ALWAYS.  My only hope now is that this incredible, ever-present, gnawing hunger disappears somewhat after I give birth. 

 

That, however, is the hard part about all of this.  I can do something about this weight, but not until 6 weeks post-partum.  Do you know how far away that is?  I have to endure at least 6 more weeks (could be 10!) of getting steadily fatter, and then 6 weeks of sitting around, not exercising, waiting for my body to recover.  I don’t want to be fat over the summer.  I don’t want to have my thigh chub rub together and give me a rash under sundresses.  I don’t want to cringe when I look at photos of me in a tank top with a new baby.  I don’t want my face to continue to look like my new driver license photo, large and round, my eyes sunken behind fat deposits, making them look even smaller. 

 

Pregnancy is supposed to be beautiful?  Pregnancy is fat an ugly on this girl, and I die a little bit every time I see another pregnant woman who has somehow pulled it off and kept her legs and arms and hips and butt relatively thin while her belly pops out like a cute basketball.  Not I.  I’ve even got a photo of me (taken by someone else) from last weekend that clearly indicates that I have back fat for the first time in my life. 

 

I guess all I can do is spend money on new clothes and pray that I will be able to lose all of this weight, instead of ending permanently higher on the scale as I did after Charles.  And cry.  I can do that, and do it well.