Denali!

So I went to the doctor for my regular monthly baby-growing checkup, and the doctor (not my normal doctor, who was booked up and couldn't see me) told me that I weighed too much, that I would make things hard on myself in the future, and that if I would "lay off the cookies," everything would be okay.

This is a loss to me for several reasons. First, this pregnancy has been the first time since I was, say, seven years old that I have felt happiness and pride in my body and what it can do, rather than wishing I could hack pieces of fat off of myself with a knife. So that's over now. I think this is a bigger loss to me than the illusion that I was healthy and doing the right thing for myself and my baby, because there is still a chance to be healthy in the future. But I can't regain that sense of peace with my body.

Second, it is a loss of peace of mind in another way. My weight was one thing, maybe the only thing, that I haven't been worrying about since I got pregnant. Most of my other worries -- my dirty house, my bank accounts, my car, my jobs, my inability to pick or keep friends -- have grown and become more aggressive since I have been pregnant. But I was able to cross off the body worries. But that's over now, too. So now, every bite I eat I get to wonder, "Is this too much? Is this too little? Is the balance of nutrients on this fork just right? Am I nourishing my baby? Am I overnourishing myself?" It's like the way I used to worry about food and fatness, except that now I get the added guilt that I am somehow hurting my baby's good chances of health and happiness on top of my own.

And this comes at a time when I am losing more and more power every day. When I have this baby, I will not be able to work outside the home anymore (which I probably couldn't do anyway because no one that I have met will hire a pregnant lady for a full-time job). And what person gets less respect than a stay-at-home mom? A fat stay-at-home mom. Everyone will think I'm lazy now for two reasons, instead of just one.

And yet I'm confused. When I look in the mirror, I honestly don't think I look that fat. My belly's bigger, of course, but that's all baby. It isn't jiggly at all. My legs are a little bigger, but even those aren't out of hand yet. Nothing else even looks any fatter to me. I guess my face is a little rounder, but how much weight can face fat really add? Like a half a pound, tops. I even still go in at the waist, and if you look at me from directly behind, you can barely even tell that I'm pregnant.

The doctor's admonition to lay off the cookies is the most rankling of all. This particular doctor was not exactly svelte himself. Also, cutting back on baked goods has never been enough to convince my body to let go of extra pounds. Neither is taking a nice sensible 20 minute walk three times a week, which is basically what I'm limited to doing as a pregnant person. I have a metabolism that could be pretty accurately characterized as Eeyore on Winnie the Pooh -- big, gray, squishy, sad, and slow. The only thing that I have ever been able to do to influence it is to stop eating all sugar, even the sugar in fruit, and to pound my body with hours of high-intensity cardio every week. Just to maintain a weight, I have to do an hour and a half on the elliptical 3 to 4 times a week, with lots of weight training and walking in between.

So that's it I guess. I'm a little dismayed and disappointed, not to mention embarrassed at being called out on my weight. I worked really hard to lose a bunch before I got pregnant, just so this exact situation wouldn't occur. And it has anyway :/

Words of encouragement appreciated.