Wherein I act like I am the only pregnant woman to feel bad about how she looks

There is momentous news in the Mighty Maggie Space-Time Continuum: last night someone called me "tiny". TINY. In reference to ME. Granted she was talking about how I don't exactly look six months pregnant, but still. She said, "you're tiny!" and then I waited a full five minutes waiting for the universe to implode. But it didn't.

No one has ever called me tiny before. Or little or small or thin or something that would imply I am anything other than a watermelon walking around on two Polish sausages. And since I'd stepped on the scale that morning to see that I'm about four or five pounds away from gaining back all the weight I lost last year, I was cautiously exuberant. Tiny! Me!

Unfortunately, she was so very wrong. My belly may be "tiny" for six months (I still look more "needs to sign up with Weight Watchers" than "pregnant") but that just means all the weight I've been gaining has been going, uh, other places. And I can tell. I hate it. I don't know if it's because I lost weight last year, therefore I know what it feels like to be smaller or what, but it really bums me out. As far as I can tell, I'm in the middle-ish range for weight gain at 25 weeks and my doctor hasn't said a word and my butt still fits in my regular pants (I checked!), but I still feel terrible. I ate my way through the first trimester and was too tired to do the work to keep a lower-carb diet (and why bother, when ice cream is so available and tastes so delicious?!) I should work harder at eating right now that I'm not starving all the time, but I'm lazy and gosh, I really like mashed potatoes. Would I have gained all this weight if I were stricter with myself? And how am I ever going to get rid of it? WOE.

One thing that should cheer me up but actually makes me feel worse is that I weighed this much when I was NOT six months pregnant.  Horrified emoticon goes here.

I am really self-conscious now too. Everyone who knows we're having a baby is suddenly checking out my stomach to see if I'm getting bigger. I actually kept my coat on at my in-laws house last weekend, just so I wouldn't have to watch their eyes go to my middle and hear the resulting comments. After my split second of "tiny" exhilaration, I ran into the husband of a friend of mine who is about three or four weeks behind me in the baby project. He always wants to know how I am, how I'm feeling, what the baby feels like, what's going on, isn't it awesome, aren't you excited blah blah blah and he really truly wants to know. Every single detail. He is so excited about his new baby and seems to celebrate every little step along the way. I guess my responses were less than enthusiastic, feeling as ungainly as I do right now, and he just shook his head at me. "I think all these changes are amazing. They're sexy."

Ho ho! I stepped out of that conversation pretty quickly. Not that I didn't appreciate the sentiment, but you know. Ick. Excuse me while I go make unladylike adjustments to the spandex band that holds up the thick elastic waist of my one pair of maternity jeans.

Let it be said that I am fully totally aware of what putting on 400 extra pounds is getting me, all right? I have a pretty good reason to be gaining weight. I am certainly not complaining about THAT. Like Phillip always says when I verge into inconsolable, "It's BABY." But I do feel bulbous and rotund and unwieldy and it's only going to get worse. Fairly soon I will need one of those hydraulic lifts they use in nursing homes to get me out of bed.  That is not going to be pretty. And I have a dreadful feeling I'm not going to be like my stick-thin friends who lost all their baby weight within weeks. (Weeks! They are superhuman! Must make new friends!)

I met the woman who said I'm tiny at our latest church visit. She has a three-month-old baby and our conversation was something like 10% stewardship, 375% baby. Most of my friends haven't had much to say about the upside-down-ness of having a baby, but this woman was blisteringly honest. She told me how tired she is, how often she feels like she's doing something wrong, how impossible it is to keep a schedule or plan anything in advance. She kept saying be easy on yourself, be easy on yourself and maybe it's silly, but I really appreciated hearing that. I've read it on blogs and in books, but being me I'll need a constant repetition playing in the real world background. I think weight gain is probably only the beginning of a host of things to berate myself about...

I had lunch with my aunt yesterday and she asked me if I was excited. I think I didn't seem very excited but you guys, I am so excited. At night I'll slouch down on the couch and put my hand on my stomach and ramble aloud to Phillip, wondering what this kid looks like, what his skin tone will be, if he'll be tall, if he'll be laid back like Phillip (oh please God!) or neurotic like me. It's true that I'm overwhelmed with what my body is doing and what we have to do to get the room ready and figuring out insurance stuff and what will happen with my job. All that stuff makes me nervous, but that doesn't mean I'm not excited. I am dying to meet this kid.

Ugh, I feel like I just brain-vomited on my website or something. Let's go back to where someone called me tiny and have a big party, except I've already eaten the entire cake and you guys will have to finish the wine.

Comments

[Jennifer]

Low carb ice cream find of the week:

Turkey Hill Peanut Butter Paradise

I had to reel it in, too. I ate my weight in carbohydrates during the first trimester.

I have gained back every single one of my previously shed 30 lbs.

Sigh. My biggest hope is that I'll end up at least one or two pounds less than my top weight after giving birth.

Oy.

I'm with you, girl.

[Maureen]

Listen, in Jack's first week of life, I elbowed him in the face while taking off a sweater. Then his 3-year-old cousin fell and sat on his head. This was my fault because I had left Jack in the Moses basket on the floor and hadn't warned the three-year-old. I have already made his little fingers bleed TWICE while cutting his unbelievably fast-growing - like I think they might have been hit by radiation or something - fingernails, and just the other day I slathered him with lotion that has made him break out into a horrible bumpy rash all over his ENTIRE BODY.

He still smiles at me.

So fear not. Stuff happens, but as long as you love him to death, he'll forgive you.

[Christina/Mrs Broccoli Guy]

I got put on the Evil Diet From H-E-Double Hockey Sticks during my 2nd pregnancy (tested "borderline high" in my glucose test - bah!) and oh boy did I miss food... I was rather miserable. So I say, if you can, enjoy! :-) Breastfeeding was a Miracle Weight Loss Program for me - I could eat anything (in large quantities!) and lost weight! It was awesome.

I am excited for you too. And I am amazed at how hilariously funny you can be with Pregnancy Brain. That is a serious achievement.

[Arwen]

The general consensus among all my friends and acquaintances who know of such things was that I was carrying small when I was pregnant. (It was really just that my height allowed the belly to spread out, so it looked smaller.) Everyone commented on how tiny I looked. Except my father-in-law, whose reaction every. single. time. we went home for the weekend was "Whoa!" (He hasn't been around a pregnant woman regularly since my MIL gave birth twenty-six years ago, so he has no frame of reference.) I got so self-conscious about it that I would try to sneak into the house, or keep my coat on in front of him.

Keep being excited to meet that baby. It really is the damn-hardest thing you've ever done and will turn your life upside down and make you more tired than you ever imagined you could be, but it is also the best thing ever.

And I agree with Maureen. Start forgiving yourself already for the mistakes you will make as the parent of a baby, because they are so not worth sweating over.

By the way, do you ever read Ask Moxie? http://moxie.blogs.com/askmoxie/ (Sorry, don't know how to make a link.) I love Moxie for her down-to-earth natural parenting style. Totally worth checking out.

[Kate P]

As one of your non-mom-commenters, let me say. . .

1. I enjoyed your thoughtful post--there is a fine line between anxiety and excitement, isn't there?
2. One of my aunt's high-school voice students who has known me for about 5 years (meaning when she first met me I was about 60 lbs. heavier and out of shape) commented to my aunt that I was tiny and MAN is it weird to hear. Granted I am only 5' tall but I still look at current pictures of myself and think, "Is that what I look like?"
3. If I come over and call you tiny and beautiful will you really let me finish the wine? :)

[Lynn]

Ohhhh boy. You haven't even hit the 8-month mark, and that's when all of my mommy friends started screaming, "Get this kid OUT of me! I want my body back!" LOL, sometimes scary to think about, but when you give birth, you're going to have a perfect, tiny, BEAUTIFUL child, and all of the unwieldiness and rotundity that you're feeling right now will be SO worth it!

Then again, ask me in two years if I feel the same way.