The F Word

Fat.

Repeat after me, I am not fat, I am growing a baby.
...Nope, still feel fat. 


We live in a word that is centralized around beauty and vanity. Since we are young girls, we play with dolls that are inhumanly thin, busty, and have perfect facial structure. Our media floods us with the idea that thin is the only beautiful, and that we should do pursue this image at any cost. When we see each other, it's not uncommon to greet with, "You look nice", which propitiates the idea that what we are on the outside is what gets us attention, success, and favor in life. Many of us shaking and moving women like to think that we are too educated and mindful to fall into such traps, and that we love our bodies just the way we are. Welp, I was one of those girls, until the body in the mirror was suddenly looking less and less like the body I had chalked up in my mind. 


I've gotten criticized for feeling this way about my looks since being pregnant. People have said, "You're PREGNANT. Don't be stupid. You aren't fat, you look great." I think to myself, oh, suddenly since we're growing a child, we're supposed to embrace our smurf-shaped waist line, jiggly arms and newly titled thunder thighs? Rationally, yes. I know in my head that growing a baby is a beautiful thing and that the changes to my body are a large part of the process. That said, it's not as easy as it seems to forsake all that we have learned about beauty for the nine-month grace period of pregnancy.

My doctor told me that I should expect to gain 25-30 pounds over the duration of the pregnancy. She said that 5-10 of those pounds should be expected within the first trimester, and then a pound a week after that. At no other time in your life are you told that you should expect to gain a pound a week and be totally kosher with the idea. I kept crossing my fingers that I would be one of those miracle women that gain exactly 7 pounds 10 ounces that come right out when that baby is born, and look like a million bucks as soon as they leave the hospital. Alas, the doctor was not wrong. At 25 weeks, I have raked in an extra 14.8 pounds (yes, those .2 pounds count, you rounder-uppers). Bless my husband's heart, he is constantly being prodded to remind me that my arms look SO SKINNY in this shirt, my booty looks perfect in these jeans, and I hardly even look pregnant from the back. Until I start walking, that is. Thanks honey.

I'm trying to if not embrace, then at least accept and respect this new body of mine. I mean, hey, I might  not look like Hiedi Klum, but I am growing a child in my uterus. That is something I can love my body for.