Can I just share a petty little vent... « Back to Group Discussions

[scowgirl]

It kind of annoys me when women (in general, nowhere in particular) are so eager to volunteer how little they've gained when they give updates as to how their pregnancy is going. I know a lot of women don't gain much weight, and actually fat women are maybe chief among that category, especially early on, so it's not like I "disapprove" of lack of weight gain. That would be pretty crappy and judgmental of me, LOL.  But it's more the fact that people always seem so eager to post about it. "I've only gained 3 pounds! I've only gained 1! I've lost weight!"

Bleah, I know I'm "just jealous" because I've already gained 7+ pounds at 14.5 weeks. I had zero morning sickness or loss of appetite, and the past 2 years have been a time of weight gain anyway as I "rebounded" from a 100-lb weight loss and have been trying to deal with a job I hate (chief coping mechanism: food), so I feel pretty crappy about myself as it is. Plus most of my early pregnancy has taken place during the holidays, so I doubt I'm alone in putting on a few. I don't really need the anxiety that comes along with feeling like I'm ruining my health and killing my baby by gaining a few more pounds than I was supposed to. It's not like I'm doing it on purpose. No, my diet isn't perfect, but I'm doing my best.

Sorry for the crankiness. I think I'm just worried about my next appointment, coming up on Tuesday. Any number of bad things could happen... they could kick me out of the midwife practice for my blood pressure, they could drop some bad news on me from the tests I did a couple of weeks back if they "forgot" to tell me before now, I could register an even bigger gain... it's stressing me out.

[menageriemama]

I'm sorry. :hug I am worried about weight gain for the first time, myself, because I have not gained much in previous pregnancies but am starting out a lot heavier this time. I agree it's not something to brag about for sure! I really feel like a lot of times it is more outside of the woman's control than people would want you to believe (and this is coming from someone who usually gains less than 5 lbs over the course of a pregnancy and has never had morning sickness), but that's a very unscientific theory of mine.

[poppyseed2012]

Scowgirl, I hear you! I'm in a yoga class and at the beginning of each session we go around the room and say how far along we are and share recent symptoms, etc. This one woman (who is actually super nice) has mentioned two weeks in a row, what a bad week she had a few weeks ago because she gained 6 pounds in one week! She just "exploded!" (we're all between 22 and 32 weeks) I thought, woman, I'm pretty sure I've gained six pounds in a day. Well, maybe not. But it seems to me, I'm packing it on at a fairly rapid rate - 30 pounds at 23 weeks.

Good luck with your tests on Tuesday!

[scowgirl]

Thanks ladies! I hate how bitter I sound sometimes, but sometimes it helps a bit to get things off my chest. menageriemama, I also suspect the amount of gain is less in people's control than they think. It's kind of like thinness in general... a lot of thin people watch their diet and try to eat nutritiously, and then they assume that's why they're thin and others are fat (the corollary is that in order to believe that, you then have to assume that most fat people are REALLY unhealthy and eat staggering amounts). But a lot of fat people eat basically the same way and are still fat--oftentimes it takes truly extreme measures to turn a fat person into a thin one. It can be kind of dangerous making assumptions or getting complacent about why and how weight losses or gains occur in different people, yet people do it all the time...

[lisarenee25]

For me, because I am large anyway, a huge weight gain would be out of the question.  I just don't think my body could do it, kwim?

for instance, my first pregnancy I was at my lowest weight.  I gained 60 lbs, which as out of control.  Granted, some of that was after the pregnancy, but whatever.  I had the wrong mindset.

My second pregnancy I didn't diet or even watch what I ate.  My body naturally gained about 10 lbs.  It's because I started out so large.  So after delivery, i was 20 lbs lighter (of course I gained it all back :))

With my third pregnancy, I have been very symptomatic.  My Mother also unexpectantly died right before Christmas.  Needless to say, I didn't eat much.  granted I exercised vigorously through the entire period (5-6 days a week) and I lost weight.  However, my midwife wants me to start gaining.  Well...my body does what it does. Really.  I am going to continue with my exercise program as long as I remain low risk, as it helps me feel better about my self, and maintain a low blood pressure.  However, I am not doing to maintain or drop my weight.

For me, feeling good is the most important thing.  If I feel like a lump - then that's not a good thing, for self esteem or otherwise.

For a person of low weight to begin with, gaining 5 lbs is not healthy and shouldn't be something to brag about.  It's unhealthy.  Having a 4 lb baby cause you only gained 4 lbs is unhealthy and shouldn't be promoted in the media or otherwise (I have seen it done).   I remember on the front of People, they featured this woman who gained 5 lbs and were boasting that she had her pre-preggo body condition back.  As an aside, they stated that the baby was 4 lbs, born premature and in the NICU.

Dumb.

You just have to work with your own body.  Everybody has their own set of circumstances they have to deal with.

[scowgirl]

Yeah, totally agree. I am definitely not judging anyone who doesn't gain much. Based on my weight, it probably wouldn't be appropriate for me to gain much either.

And you certainly wouldn't want to stop exercising just so you could gain! Honestly I feel like a lot of these rules are pretty arbitrary. As you guys have said, the body does what it does.

I know what you mean about the celebrity culture of "getting your body back" in record time. I remember reading an article once about a soap opera star (so she was very thin anyway, of course) who went into an audition fairly late in her pregnancy and was bragging that they couldn't even tell she was expecting. That's fine if that's what happens, but it is certainly nothing to boast about, especially if (as I got the impression) she was dieting to stay thin enough to keep working. That is messed up if women feel the need to go to that extreme.

[butterfly_mommy]

Yeah my grandmother who is naturally petite and OBSESSED with her weight and everybody else and is constantly "bragging" how she didn't gain any weight when she was pregnant with her babies (5 of them, not at once lol) and how she only weighed 135lbs when she went in to deliver my mother. I also her how she took her driving test when she was 9 mons pregnant with my uncle and the instructor had no idea she was pregnant. God it is so irritating! My sister and I just laugh about it now. I am also have developed the response "Wow that was supper unhealthy, Dr's in the 50's had it so backwards, you were really lucky your babies were healthy" I say this whenever she starts going on how she didn't gain any weight. My mom said that when she was pregnant with me she gained a lot of weight, she was tiny to begin with, and her mom (my grandma) was embarrassed at how big she was and tried to discourage her from showing off her bump in a dress :( When I was pregnant with my first I had developed polyhydramnios (excess amniotic fluid" and got really big, at my baby shower all my grandma and great aunt could talk about was "how HUGE I was" how they didn't gain anything and how they were so small...blah blah blah. 

[scowgirl]

This is NOT necessarily cause and effect so on some level I feel bad for posting it at all. However, it's been bothering me, and butterfly_mommy's post reminded me of it. In 2010 my DH's cousin had her first baby and gained very little weight. Late in the pregnancy my MIL was commiserating with her about how all these doctors want you to gain so much weight, and you really don't need to, and she (my MIL) left the hospital wearing a form-fitting pencil skirt. The cousin agreed and they were both acting like there is basically no reason to gain any weight in pregnancy. After the birth, DH's cousin was tiny, the thinnest I've ever seen her (still is today, and she was very small to start with). Although I also heard from her dad over the holidays that these days she's always talking about needing to lose 5 more pounds, which makes me really sad.

Anyway, one day she blacked out while driving home from work and hit a mailbox. Luckily she was not hurt and the baby was not in the car. MIL blamed it on cousin "still trying to breastfeed." Her baby was about 6 months at this time. I realize this is a false dichotomy; the exhaustion did not necessarily stem from her weight loss. All new parents are exhausted, and this could have happened to anyone. But I wonder what is wrong with this picture in general when we glorify fitting into tight clothes on the way home from the hospital, and pooh-pooh breastfeeding beyond a few months? Misplaced priorities IMO even if one is not necessarily a direct tradeoff for the other.

If nothing else, people so often fail to think critically about how doctors' behavior is not always 100% objective and based on science. I once had a Weight Watchers leader who looked back fondly on a doctor who scrawled "FATSO" on her naked stomach with a pen as a way of shocking her into losing weight. To her, he was trying to help her. To me, it's so obvious we are talking about a dude who had a LOT of issues with women, and who committed a troubling violation of a woman's body, no matter what his medical opinion on weight loss or how valid it may or may not have been. By the same token, it bothers me how few women question recommendations for minimal weight gain in previous generations. Sure, maybe these doctors thought they were doing the right thing medically by pregnant women in making these recommendations. But I can guarantee there was a healthy dose of misogyny in there in a lot of cases too.

[eleuthia]

Originally Posted by scowgirl 
If nothing else, people so often fail to think critically about how doctors' behavior is not always 100% objective and based on science. I once had a Weight Watchers leader who looked back fondly on a doctor who scrawled "FATSO" on her naked stomach with a pen as a way of shocking her into losing weight. To her, he was trying to help her. To me, it's so obvious we are talking about a dude who had a LOT of issues with women, and who committed a troubling violation of a woman's body, no matter what his medical opinion on weight loss or how valid it may or may not have been. By the same token, it bothers me how few women question recommendations for minimal weight gain in previous generations. Sure, maybe these doctors thought they were doing the right thing medically by pregnant women in making these recommendations. But I can guarantee there was a healthy dose of misogyny in there in a lot of cases too.

This makes me both sad and LIVID. And I think it does have a lot to do with misogyny (and *internalized* misogyny, which may help explain why many women do not question their doctors). It reminds me of a Naomi Wolf quote I recently saw on pinterest: "A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, [it is] an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women's history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one." I think when it comes to pregnancy, it really is so often about making women into "good patients" so they will be compliant and convenient in birth. 

I am worried I will be dismissed from the birth center if my weight gain becomes a "problem". I saw a dietitian (free through work) a couple times and when we discussed eating for pregnancy, she said I should probably only gain 10-15lbs... while pointing at a sheet that showed how weight gain in pregnancy breaks down and 15lbs barely covers the fetus/placenta/amniotic fluid/uterus/maternal blood. You're also supposed to gain for maternal breast tissue, maternal fluids, and maternal fat/nutrient stores. So even though no one is supposed to "diet" during pregnancy... she was basically telling me that *I* really did need to lose weight (or gain nothing). That just seems unrealistic to me. 

[scowgirl]

I love that quotation. I think it's so true.

I was reading The Well-Rounded Mama a while back and I believe she said that the maternal fat stores are the only part of pregnancy gain that most fat women wouldn't "need." The rest is all important for the baby. I think there is a lot about weight gain recommendations for larger mothers that does have to do with sort of a "back door" way of getting them to (effectively) lose weight during pregnancy. Because weight loss is always the most important thing in the world, of course... 

[butterfly_mommy]

Originally Posted by scowgirl 

I love that quotation. I think it's so true.

I was reading The Well-Rounded Mama a while back and I believe she said that the maternal fat stores are the only part of pregnancy gain that most fat women wouldn't "need." The rest is all important for the baby. I think there is a lot about weight gain recommendations for larger mothers that does have to do with sort of a "back door" way of getting them to (effectively) lose weight during pregnancy. Because weight loss is always the most important thing in the world, of course... 

I agree and the medical community uses the "health of your baby" to make larger women obey and try to lose weight while pregnant.  

When I had DS he was 9lbs 11 oz alone not including his placenta, and all the other fluids. I "lost" almost 20 lbs in just baby stuff right after I had him so if I had only gained 15 lbs then that would have meant I would have had to actually lost weight during my pg. 

[Gr8fulMama]

Reading this thread reminded me of something my mother told me - she was given AMPHETAMINE DIET PILLS by her doctor when she was pregnant with my sister in 1967, because he thought she was gaining too much weight.  How f*^king crazy is that?