Pregnant women (and I am addressing pregnant women here specifically, because I assume transgender men have a different set of body image hurdles during pregnancy that I can’t possibly understand): I’m begging you to stop thinking of yourselves as fat.
I was watching The Mindy Project, and the most recent episode was Mindy lamenting the fact that she’s gaining weight during her pregnancy. A lot of the pregnancy related humor this season just doesn’t ring true to me. Mindy is an OB/GYN; and a lot of the clueless newly pregnant mother stuff seems like the exact kind of stuff she’d be familiar with. Danny’s an OB too, and he’s believing old wives’ tales? Then again, first time pregnancy makes you into a whole new, paranoid person, so maybe it’s more realistic than I’m giving it credit for.
I’ve been pregnant twice. The first time? Was at the height of extremely low-rise jeans. The kind you had to wax to wear. I spent that entire pregnancy watching Britney Spears’s oiled torso gyrating all over VH1. It was rough. And the whole time, I felt like crap, because I weighed two hundred pounds in the last week. It was the most I’d ever weighed in my entire life. And I felt fat.
Look, it’s not fun, especially when you gain the amount of weight I did (between seventy and seventy-five pounds; there was a lot of water weight fluctuation). Your ankles hurt. Your knees hurt. You pee a little when you stand up. You’ve got stretch marks, and you sweat like you’re running hurdles just to get up and go to the bathroom (for the thirtieth time that day). And it’s because you’ve gained weight. Even if it’s just fifteen pounds. Even if you’re carrying a cute little basketball under your shirt that makes every woman you encounter tell you how much she hates you. You feel fat.
But you’re not fat, okay? You’re pregnant. Yes, diet and fitness are still important during pregnancy. Yes, weight gain during pregnancy can be caused by a number of serious conditions. You’ve read the books. You know this. Worry about that all you want (because you won’t be able to keep yourself from worrying about it, anyway). But when you look at yourself in the mirror, don’t hate yourself because your belly sticks out, or you’re chinning for two. Your body is supposed to do that. It’s where the baby goes.
We judge ourselves so harshly that we shame ourselves for a natural function of our body. Why are we so hard on ourselves, especially at a time when we’re really emotionally vulnerable? It’s bullshit.
I wish I could go back in time and tell first-pregnancy me that I deserve better than to spend nine months hating my body even more than usual. Since I can’t (and since I’m never having another freeloading womb tenant), I’ll just tell it to you all. Some of you are bound to be pregnant. Everyone know this is the place for sexy people on the internet.
But do it, guys. Stop putting yourself down because you’re not one of the few pregnant women who don’t have to buy new clothes in their third trimester. You probably don’t expect that of other pregnant women, so why expect it of yourself?
So, that’s it. That’s the end of my plea. Try not to worry about how “fat” you are, and start worrying instead that you’re soon going to be responsible for the nurturing, caring, and training of a human being wholly separate from yourself.
Doesn’t help that there are ‘weight loss aides’ aka gimmicks designed to collect money from the insecure that feature women who, in their ‘before’ photos are pregnant and miserable looking whilst the ‘after’ shows a smiling, more slender person. Damn, that stuff must work great! /sarcasm
I was heavy when I was pregnant with my first. Can honestly say that pregnancy was the best diet I ever went on because morning sickness has me losing 30 pounds in 28 days (very not healthy) When women don’t gain adequate weight during gestation, it really fucks up the blood chemistry which in turn isn’t at all a good thing for amniotic Attika resident (sorry; I view pregnancy as my body being hijacked by a parasitic entity playing feng shui with my innards [and thank you Stewie Griffen] until t-minus evacuation time)… so when women deliberately try not to gain weight when preggo, it saddens me because there’s a whole other being dependent upon whatever nutrition the mother can keep down.
I’m 20 weeks pregnant with my 2nd kid, and I would have thought that since I just went through this in 2013 I would be a lot more chill this time around, knowing what to expect body-change-wise. It is so daunting to feel so out of control over your appetite and size. There are days that I feel like I would fight like a lion over a dead gazelle for a bagel with cream cheese. Some days I embrace my growing size. Other days it’s harder. But one thing I won’t do is put myself down – I have a 19 month-old-daughter now, who is watching EVERYTHING I do. If anything, for HER sake, I am loving myself this time around 🙂
Thanks, Jenny. I’m on my third pregnancy and I started it the heaviest I’ve ever been. I’ve never been super thin, but I didn’t feel fat with my first two pregnancies like I sometimes do now. I work in the medical field, sometimes with pregnancy women, and I know all about healthy pregnancy and how gaining weight is what’s supposed to happen, but sometimes it’s hard not to be hard on myself. (I think you thoery about Mindy and Danny might be right. It’s not always easy to practice what you preach.) Anyway, your blog post is a nice reminder. Thank you.
I wish I could share this with the girl on BabyCenter who still fits in her size 2 jeans. The one whose dr asks if she eats enough, yet she’s worried about gaining weight. I want to shake some sense into her.
I haven’t watched this season yet, but it does seem unrealistic that Mindy Lahiri would be moaning about weight gain when she is an OB/GYN and therefore would know exactly what to expect about pregnancy…
It wasn’t necessarily the weight gain that bothered me when I was pregnant, but the fact that my body was morphing into this shape that I had no control over. Especially by the end, you feel like a swollen, lumbering belly with legs. I was also pissed because I made it to 37 weeks with no stretch marks and then literally overnight BAM! I went to bed with a slightly itchy lower stomach, and woke up with purple lines. I exercised 4+ times a week and ate very healthfully and gained 30-35 lbs. I have a friend who is 7 months with her 3rd child and is barely showing. It’s hard not to compare your changing body to others, even though no two pregnancies are the same.
And then there’s the pressure to lose that baby weight at lightning speed immediately after delivery. I thought it was really awesome when Kate Middleton allowed herself to be photographed with her post-baby belly.
They’re talking in the press about whether Kate is ‘big enough’ for 8 months. Poor girl.
That so captures how I felt. I didn’t mind the fact that I gained weight while pregnant, but the fact that the body I was used to and fairly fond of got hijacked and turned into a shape I didn’t know, recognize, or have any clue how to dress seemingly overnight – on top of 14 weeks of horrible exhaustion, nausea, and aversion to pretty much all food and 20 weeks of forced vegetarianism freaked me out. I was just not comfortable with my body during pregnancy at all.
There’s something about pregnant women complaining about being fat that just… I can’t do the thing. Not complaining about any sort of bad feeling, but specifically about being “fat”… just… sorry you look more like me than you usually do? Didn’t know it sucked so much.
*shrugs* Just not a thing I wanna talk about, I guess.
My experience have been the doctors and nurses. They weigh me each time I go in and tell me, “Now, you only need to eat 300 more calories a day and gain 15lbs for a healthy pregnancy.”
It’s repeated every 4 weeks. Weigh in. Different nurse, different doc, 300 calories, 15lbs.
Listen, I’m a lucky girl and I won’t brag about it. But I am not paranoid about my body normally. Fuck, I’m an adult with acne, I care far more about than my pant size.
However, listening to that same speech each month makes me very paranoid. I just want to tell them, “Listen, I got this. Please leave me alone.”
That’s a really awful number to give. Say you have a 7 pound baby, you have a pound and a half of placenta, which puts you at 9.5, then add in almost 2 pounds of amniotic fluid, puts you at 11.5, plus 2 pounds of uterine tissue to support that 7 pound kid so 13.5 plus an easy extra pound of breast tissue 14.5. That’s not counting the extra blood and fluids your body needs, or the extra fat it’ll store naturally for breastfeeding (not assuming you will, but your body does, lol). If you have an 8 pound baby, are you supposed to just give up a little extra blood to make up for it?
That is actually something I’ve heard, that if your bmi is “normal”, you’re given a range of 30 pounds being healthy, but if you’re fat, you’re given a much lower range or told to not gain weight (which is essentially losing weight as the kid grows). Not cool. And that’s not even talking about people told to diet during pregnancy.
Jenny for President! Eloquently put, as always.
I have tried so, so hard to be kind to myself this time round – I’m 32 weeks pregnant and I have heard it all! When I had my son 5 years ago I hated every pound I gained and beat myself up after I’d had him for not being ‘back to normal’ straight away, as if looking like nothing had ever happened would make me somehow a ‘better’ mum. I fought to show the world that I was not succumbing to ‘letting myself go’. Well, sod that. I didn’t lose a pound until I stopped feeding my son and went back to work. And I don’t know why for sure, but I’m convinced it was because I’d stopped breastfeeding, even though they say that’ll make you lose weight fast. It just didn’t work that way for me.
I think the worst bit was constantly hearing people’s opinions. They’re doing it to me now, I’ve spent months being told how tiny I am (not easy to hear when midwives and doctors are monitoring your bump size because they’re concerned) only to hear the same people tell me how MASSIVE I now am (loudly, publicly and accompanied by vigorous pointing) because apparently I’ve ‘ballooned’ in the last three weeks. It’s humiliating. I don’t know why there’s this tendency for women to comment so loudly about how ‘fat’ pregnant women are, make judgements on their size and then voice these opinions at top volume. They’d never dream of patting a non-pregnant colleague’s belly after Christmas and declaring, “Ooh, you’re getting big now!” would they?
I have a beautiful, lovely colleague who’s six weeks behind me in her pregnancy. She’s putting on baby weight everywhere, including her face, but it’s not as if she’s doing it deliberately. She can’t eat anything without people commenting. I tell her she’s fine as much as I can, and that she should just enjoy her pregnancy. She’s suffered horrid sickness and is finally keeping food down. Her lunch should not be up for discussion.
The conversations had when people have had their babies are depressing too – from “You look so good!” “Wow! What’s your secret?” to, “Ittook me ages to lose my baby weight too, Weight Watchers really helps…” Er, what business is it of yours what I look like? I’ll look how I want, thanks! I hate hate HATE the implication that some mums martyr themselves to the Yummy Mummy
Cause because they are Better and others can’t be bothered and just eat biscuits. Rubbish. Some lose weight without trying, some try desperately and never lose it. It’s heartbreaking when mums are miserable because they feel the pressure to look a certain way when they should be enjoying their new life as a mother.
So like I said – this time, I’m trying really hard to be forgiving of something I can’t control anyway. I haven’t weighed myself and I’ve taken tonnes of belly pics this time, because I took four last time through being too ashamed. There’s way more to life than fat or thin, and there’s nothing I can do about pregnancy weight until I’ve had this baby anyway, so I’m going to bloody-well enjoy it.
Sorry, that was more of a rant than I meant!
Well I for one am not going to criticise you for ranting. That is exactly how I feel! I’m in a similar situation to you being smaller than I should be and EVERYONE commenting on it.
You might enjoy this blog post I wrote a few weeks back. THIS is a rant, my friend 😉
https://thelittlethingsaddup.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/pregnant-people-are-still-people/
Your friend-of-a-friend sounds delightful. I have similar colleagues who assume that pregnancy news is everyone’s news. It’s not. It’s deeply personal, not gossip.
Well I’m going in to delivery next week (barring surprises) so I actually have some feels about this topic!
I was already at the high end of my normal weight range when I got pregnant– I had this notion of losing weight before I got pregnant, so in the end I’d reset to normal, but LOL NO DICE. Went into things already a bit big.
I actually really like my pregnancy shape and I’ve always found the bellies adorable. But it’s that number on the scale that is gradually getting more alarming, because only about 10-15 pounds of it is going to slough off next week, and then the rest is aaalll me (and shrinking poochy uterus I suppose).
But that isn’t what nags at me. What REALLY bothers me is how everyone around me is constantly encouraging me to “indulge.” Either straight up buying me junk, or encouraging me to eat big portions because right now it “doesn’t count.” Except that next month when I’ve still got 40 pounds to lose, I *know* those are the same people who are going to feel embarrassed for me (I have a bunch of slender in-laws who instantly dropped baby weight), and they’ll give me awkward unhelpful advice like they are assuming I feel terrible (because if they weighed as much as me they would feel terrible). Don’t project bad self-esteem on me, and therefore imply that I should be feeling bad. And certainly don’t do it after spending six months laughing off my concerns when I say no, I don’t want that giant piece of cake. >_<
I’ve always had a really complicated relationship with my big tummy and usually wear tops designed to hang from my breasts and drape over my tummy to hide it. However, when I got pregnant I suddenly wanted to wear tight clinging tops that outlined my tummy and I felt really proud of how much it stuck out. I wish I could have kept that feeling after delivery and just felt confident to rock my big tummy even without a baby inside it.
I did really like my stretch marks though. They made me feel like one of the Thundercats, like maybe Jagheera if she was a tiger. 🙂
I was the same. It was nice to finally be proud of my big belly and be comfortable to show it off.
There’s a lot of women posting (mostly naked) pictures of themselves and talking about how thin they still are and how quickly they lost the weight afterward. All I can think when I see that is they’re very insecure and need everyone and their mother staring to feel good about themselves.
There’s just way too much pressure on women to look a certain way. The general populace doesn’t seem to get anymore that weight gain and other changes are perfectly normal while pregnant and worrying excessively about it just puts added stress on the mother and her baby.
Judging from a few things I’ve read, there’s a number of women that are actually willing to risk their baby’s health, if not life, so they can stay a certain size. Some going so far as to starve themselves or make themselves throw up. What’s worse is they’re usually the same women that shame others for letting their bodies work and look as nature intended during this time. All I can say to them is I hope their kids don’t end up as vain as they are.
My first baby, I put on 8kgs overall (I guess 20 pounds?). It was 5 months in before I started to show. I wasn’t particuarly concerned, I figured I was already overweight, so the baby had plenty of space to bounce around in. Horrible morning sickness probably didn’t help, I could barely eat anything for 4 months. My bub was a little thing, 6 pounds 9 ounces.
Second pregnancy I put on 18 kgs, most of that was fluid. I put it down to being prengant over summer instead of winter. I couldn’t find shoes to fit, my rings had to come off etc. It was terrible, and it was all gone within a month of having my boy, who had stopped gaining weight, and I got a lecture from the nursing staff for losing my weight too quickly. They thought I was dieting.
It’s insane that we’ve gotten to the point where a normal body isn’t recognised any more. That our bodies doing the things it is supposed to do is considered bad and malfunctioning. There’s a sickness running through society, we’ve airbrushed reality so much we no longer recognise it when it happens.
I’m 28 weeks pregnant with first baby and to be quite honest I’m less bothered about my body than I’ve ever been before. Shit happens, and in my book it’s worth it if you get a new person in your life at the end of it. If anything, I’d rather be a bit bigger because everyone says I’m small for the stage of pregnancy I’m at and I kind of wish they’d stop looking me up and down and commenting all the freaking time. Except that being bigger would probably give me even more aches and pains. I totally don’t get this feeling “fat” while pregnant thing and I have absolutely no intention of trying to lose weight afterwards.
I so agree. I am currently pregnant with #4 (boy #4) and I gained 30 lbs (up to 195 lbs), 9 lbs, 15 lbs, and 5 lbs. All of those times I was doing something different with my life and they all affected me differently.
The first time I was stressed and pregnant with my 1st, 2nd time I was stressed and going to school, 3rd time I was stressed about another 32 week loss and going to school (crawling on the ground for Theatre class and giving birth a week later), and now I am still a student, teaching 5th grade in a self contained classroom, buying a house, Etc. I’m also stressed still. I kind of wish I would gain more weight this time because I barely eat and I’m stressed over everything.
Anyways I’m not sure where I was going, but whatever weight we gain during our pregnancies is for the baby and we shouldn’t stress.
I get what you are saying, but you are lucky bc you didn’t gain much. So one would have to think that it makes sense you didn’t care lol. Both pregnancies my body just packs onto my legs and I can’t stop it. I am 30 weeks now and up to the standard quota we are given. I would die to have gained 5lbs or 15lbd
It calls to mind what happened with Kim Kardashian. While I’m not a fan of hers at all, when she was pregnant people were picking at her weight constantly and I can’t imagine how it made normal people feel. She didn’t even get insanely huge, I read she was around 170-180 pounds at the end of her pregnancy.
She isn’t the only one though, I’ve read of other actresses that were 170ish at the end of their pregnancies and the way people talk about it , they make it sound like these woman put 1000 pounds on and it is the worst thing in the world. I don’t understand why women’s bodies are okay to pick apart when it comes to weight no matter what, and the fact that it happens to pregnant women bothers me to no end.
Can I just sidebar to say this this season killed The Mindy Project for me. I always loved it but this season mindy just turned into this selfish monster who did whatever she wanted and threw all her nearest and dearest under the bus to suit her needs. Then Danny became this uptight moraliser who is embarrassed to be even seen with her and it seemed like the baby was just thrown in there to make this couple who kinda hated each other stay t
Can I just sidebar to say this this season killed The Mindy Project for me. I always loved it but this season mindy just turned into this selfish monster who did whatever she wanted and threw all her nearest and dearest under the bus to suit her needs. Then Danny became this uptight moraliser who is embarrassed to be even seen with her and it seemed like the baby was just thrown in there to make this couple who kinda hated each other stay together. It really didn’t jive with the clever writing previously and I had to switch off because I honestly couldn’t root for any of the characters anymore.
Whoops! Sorry for the double post – my typing fingers went awry
First time commenter with an itchy trigger finger that makes me look like an idiot (see other comment). Anyway, enjoy this utterly brilliant (and hilarious) polemic on the unrealistic standards we use to make women feel like shit:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fbwsh9Iw_w
Unlike so many if you, I found this blog through the boss series, but decided to hang around for the FSoG sporking, then went ahead and decided to pitch my tent (heh) for Jenny’s thoughtful, no bullshit approach to issues I care about, not to mention the incisive commentary. I’ve been inhaling this blog for the last week and I just wanted to let Jenny and everyone here know that you’ve encouraged me to to take a harder, deeper look at such a wide variety if issues. Keep being awesome.
Ps-I just bought Bad Boy, Good Man. I know it will be a great read, but it’s also a pledge of support. Stand tall, Jenny. Your voice is loud, articulate and carries farther than you know.
I’ve never been pregnant and, god willing, never will be – but this is actually something I’ve been thinking about lately. There’s a woman I worked with who used to be on the low end of plus sized, and she basically went on a starvation diet to get down to like a size two and stay there. Her bones jut out, her head looks too big for her body, her skin and hair look terrible – you can tell it’s not a healthy weight for her.
And then she got pregnant … and continued the same starvation diet. Two weeks ago, she posted that her son had intra-uterine growth restriction (most often caused by poor maternal nutrition) and his development was severely behind. A couple of days later, she had an emergency C-section at seven months. Her son weighs three pounds and has who knows what developmental issues …. because she didn’t want to be “fat.”
That’s terrible, I hope her son ends up okay.
I worked out about 20 years ago that I couldn’t never be a tiny size. I found a size 8 (Australian sizes, not sure the conversion) and I couldn’t zip it up due to the width of my shoulders. My body just physically can’t get below certain dimensions regardless of how much weight I lose. That was kind of a nice realisation, because it made me be realistic about clothes.
I’m in the same boat. I am literally big boned. Every bone I have sticks out so people assume I’m dealing with an eating disorder and yet I would never be able to step near a size that the average actress can fit in. I never will.
Admittedly I do struggle with an eating disorder but right now I’ve been told by my doctor that I need to maintain my weight as it is (not lose any more despite wanting to) and I would be okay if I stick with the weight I’m currently at. Anyway, what I believe the trigger was for my eating disorder was the fact that as a preteen I was still big boned and I would see girls that fit in model like sizes and I so desperately wanted to get into them. Turns out you can’t lose weight in your bones.
I have the same problem. I’m 5′ 9″, and all the relevant measurements point to me having an extra-large frame. On top of that, I gain muscle mass pretty easily, especially in the lower half of my body. When I was in peak condition in college, I wore a size 8/10. When I briefly slipped 15 or so lbs below that one year, I looked and felt awful; bones stuck out all over the place and I was always tired.
I think I’m going to save this and make my pregnant friends read it. I’m not pregnant and don’t ever plan to be but I hear this from people all the time and well they don’t listen to me so maybe they’ll listen to you!
Also, I have that Wonder Woman shirt! Yay!
OMG! You have the Sorting Hat! That is so cool! Also, great post.
I’d like to add, equally don’t beat yourself up about not getting your body ‘back in shape’ three seconds after your have the baby. Chillax. Enjoy the baby. Your body may ore may not go back to the same size it was before, but don’t hurt yourself physically or mentally trying to force it to do so on your schedule.
I hate how being pregnant makes you a target for everyone that comes into contact with you to tell you what should or should not do. Do what you can to be happy, and to be healthy for yourself and your baby, no matter how much you weigh. Your baby isn’t going to care what size you are. I have always been small, and when I had my first baby, I gained about 40 pounds. I would go to work and pack healthy snacks, like grapes and carrots, because I liked them. I has a lady say to me one day, that I was “starving my baby”. By eating healthy foods. Just because I was pregnant, she felt she had the right to tell me what to do. I told her to mind her own business. My baby was born 7lb 11oz, and was completely healthy.
i’ve never been pregnant, but this:
We judge ourselves so harshly that we shame ourselves for a natural function of our body. Why are we so hard on ourselves, especially at a time when we’re really emotionally vulnerable? It’s bullshit.
is totally applicable to so many other body issues too. thanks for another inspiring post, jenny!
Thank you for this Jenny.
This is spot on. I’ve never been pregnant myself, but I’ve seen so many friends in their pregnancies at all different sizes, from “gains weight all over” to my tiny coworker who declared about six months in that she could no longer feel her ribs. (We haven’t let her live that one down.) Of all the things to be concerned about during pregnancy, this is the last thing that should be on anyone’s minds.
As part of an overweight but madly in love couple trying to get pregnant … thank you. I’m a huge fan of yours Jenny and everything you post helps me in some way or another. Don’t let anyone get you down.
Yes, yes, this is me! How did you know?!?!?!?!?!?!?
I’m 35 weeks pregnant, I’ve gained 35-40 pounds, my fingers are huge, and I feel FAT. I immediately gained a cup size when the little zygote implanted and that didn’t stop: my breasts grew 4 sizes and then I was forced to stop counting because I had to switch to plus sized nursing bras which only come in small, medium and large. They did not grow from a AA to a D. They grew from a DD to an H, and of course straight down and away from each other so now I have the breasts of a 65 year old grandmother. I’m pretty sure the rest of the gain went on my face, which became “rounder” in the nice words of my husband, and then began gaining chins. If there’s anything that will make you look larger than you are, it’s big breasts and a double (triple) chin.
The internet shaming machine has not helped. On one hand it’s all, “well, HEALTHY weigh gain is 25-35 pounds and you shouldn’t use pregnancy as an excuse to let yourself go” and on the other,”You are creating the MIRACLE OF LIFE how dare you care about how you look, I feel sorry for your kid you selfish, shallow bitch.”
Meanwhile, “emotionally vulnerable” is right. I occasionally burst into tears because I’m convinced my husband is going to leave me for one of those oiled-up model types on the TV who actually still have visible waists. And I wouldn’t be able to chase him because a) I can’t put my shoes on, b) I get out of breath if I go faster than a waddle, and c) it’s probably too far away from the nearest restroom. My cat has hissed at me twice in two days, probably wondering why this weird bloated lady keeps shoving her sausage fingers at her.
(Sigh). Why do we do this to ourselves indeed?
After my first baby. I gained weight and it was no surprise because it runs in the family. I am not worried in gaining weight. I am not ashamed being fat and I accept that and so with my husband. Later on, I exercise coz I feel like if I don’t exercise it really makes me lazy.
Just remember to give yourself time to recover and to wait to exercise until your healthcare provider gives the OK. If you continue to worry or have anxiety about gaining weight, talk to your doctor.