Before becoming pregnant, I didn’t expect to find myself worrying about my body size or how many pounds I put on. I’m tall for a woman and reasonably athletic, so I figured I’d sprout a cute little baby bump just like the women in the maternity clothing ads. I wanted to look like I was pregnant! It seemed, too, that pregnancy weight gain would look very different than “getting fat”, so I wouldn’t need to worry about judgments from others. What I didn’t realize was the extent to which I would judge myself.
The first hurdle was managing my morning sickness during the first nine or so weeks. I was fortunate to experience only mild nausea, which I soothed by eating every carbohydrate I could get my hands on. Aside from mountains of crackers that I popped in my mouth at work all day, I craved bagels with cream cheese and slices of pizza – and I didn’t try to fight it. Unlike many people I know who lost weight in the first trimester, I gained a few pounds. Given how sedentary I became from the first trimester exhaustion (especially during the week I had off during Hurricane Sandy, when I almost never left the couch!) I’m actually surprised I didn’t gain more.
The second trimester is when the pregnancy weight gain really got going. The winter weather served up frigid, slippery and generally uninviting outdoor conditions, and I was still skittish enough about possible miscarriage that I avoided exerting myself whenever I felt the slightest twinge of round ligament pain or belly stretching. I did have a previous miscarriage weighing on my mind; though I had no concrete evidence that exercise had anything to do with it, I did remember feeling a couple of sharp twinges while at the gym in the days leading up to the miscarriage, and the coincidental timing was enough to unnerve me. I felt more comfortable taking elevators than stairs and avoided longer walks, and my exercise consisted of the occasional prenatal yoga class and sporadic sessions on the machines at the gym (going very gently, of course).
Around the same time, I discovered that, although I still couldn’t tolerate coffee, I had rediscovered my taste for hot chocolate. It provided a lovely small caffeine boost, and a jolt of extra sugary calories every morning. My love of chocolate as a dessert returned as well, and I found that I craved peanut butter cups and sugar cookies. More mundanely, a citrus craving kicked in and I found myself drinking whole bottles of orange juice every day – healthier than hot chocolate, but still filled with lots of extra calories.
As a result of all of this, I went in for a mid-2nd-trimester appointment and discovered that I had gained 11 pounds in a single month. I was shocked, but when the nurse weighing me declared, “The doctor is going to want to know what you’ve been eating!” I felt defensive. I wasn’t overweight – in fact everyone had been telling me that I was “all belly” and looking great. I was inching up towards the upper limit of the recommended weight gain for pregnant women, but I decided I’d rather hit that limit than be lectured about a number on a scale. As it turned out, the OB saved the lecture for a much later appointment, well after I’d begun to exercise more actively and at least attempt to curb the cravings – which I found quite ironic!
I began to feel uncomfortable with my weight when some of the early maternity clothes I’d bought no longer fit comfortably. I’d bought two pairs of jeans in a “size medium” (whatever medium means) and one “large” so that I’d have baggier, roomier jeans to travel and lounge in. Suddenly I noticed that I couldn’t really wiggle into the smaller pairs anymore and that even the bigger pair was starting to pinch around my thighs. I wasn’t quite “all belly” – I’d gained quite a bit in my thighs and upper arms too. This wasn’t just baby-related. I’d let myself get off track, and still had an alarming amount of time left in my pregnancy to gain even more pregnancy weight. What if I vaulted way over the recommended gain and had a baby too big to deliver easily, like my OB warned me? And what if the number on the scale, which I’d sworn not to care about, went so high that there was no going back?
My husband bore the brunt of my weight gain-related fretting, assuring me again and again that I looked great, I was still sexy, I was supposed to be gaining weight – but I had a hard time really believing it. I felt terrible every time I ate something “indulgent”, but I was frequently low energy and craved the quick boosts that the carbs and desserts gave me. I resented having to care about watching my food intake when all I wanted to do was focus on the baby, and the pregnancy hormones were making me feel insatiably hungry — and the intense emotional ups and downs definitely contributed to my eating. When my “large” jeans started to feel too tight to wear, and my OB offered to send me to a nutritionist because I’d gained another nine pounds in a single month, I knew I had to do something about my weight gain. I knew I couldn’t lose weight, but I figured I could try not to gain any more.
The weather helped. It became warm enough to walk outside, so I started changing my commute to walk longer distances, and I started swimming twice a week at the gym, which turned out to be fabulous exercise and also felt wonderful because it made my belly feel weightless. I took the stairs more at work, particularly down (going up was more difficult because I’d get winded pretty quickly). I tried to attend prenatal yoga faithfully and to drink way more water throughout the day, which helped me feel more energized (because it turned out I was eating to get “energy” when I was actually dehydrated). The increased water intake also slowed me down when I ate meals, making it less likely that I’d overeat.
The more energy I had, the more I wanted to be active. It was the opposite of the earlier spiral, where being sedentary and eating while sitting around was encouraging me to feel more tired and sedentary – the more active I was, the more active I wanted to be, and the less I felt the urge to eat extra. The OB even complimented me at a recent appointment about managing my weight better. I’m still inching upwards (and outwards) and finding that most of my clothes (including maternity ones) don’t fit, but at least I know that most of that weight is now the baby, rather than thigh circumference that I’ll have to whittle off later.
I don’t want to make it sound like this pregnancy has been all about my weight, but the truth is that it’s never far from my mind. Especially in the third trimester, weight is what people comment on because it’s so visible – most of the time it’s in the form of compliments about how well my body is holding up, with the occasional “Are you sure there’s only one in there?” which has got to rank up there amongst the stupidest comments ever said aloud to pregnant women. But even compliments make me feel self-conscious, because they’re reminders that everyone is noticing my body and the changes that I’m struggling with. Since I’ve started to exercise more, I’ve been able to shift the comments towards talk about my activity level, rather than my size per se, which I like much better. I’m hoping to be able to continue to exercise and be active once I recover from giving birth, and to keep the focus on that with my new little one – rather than scrutinizing what’s being eaten or the numbers on a scale. I don’t want to become as obsessed with post-pregnancy weight loss as I was with pregnancy weight gain.
The post Dealing with Pregnancy Weight Gain appeared first on Preggie Pals.
