Spoiler:
I do not have gestational diabetes. <collective sigh of relief and DEEP RESENTMENT FOR MY UNNECESSARY SUFFERING>.
Which
provides the most obvious, natural and totally-not-cumbersome-at-all transition
to today’s inspired discussion: pregnancy fitness and weight gain.
Otherwise
titled: why every pregnancy book seems to want me to go bowling.
Ah,
pregnancy fitness. Pregnancy weight gain. Pregnancy shape and body image. Let’s just all hold hand and sing kumbaya[1], shall we?
<deep breath>.
When I
was struggling with infertility, I used to make bold proclamations – if I could
just get pregnant, I wouldn’t care what the physical cost was; I wouldn’t care
if I had to spend 9 months projectile vomiting, on bed rest; I wouldn’t care if
I gained 85 lbs and was never able to see my toes again; I wouldn’t care if all
my hair fell out and my entire body was riddled with gestational acne. Just get that baby in me[2]!
Of
course, as with most reckless proclamations and appeals to the universe,
reality was slightly different. The first trimester was a nauseated mess of an affair, full of bland carbohydrates and sea bands and shingles
and mystifying rashes. It was also a time of completely disrupted exercise
because TIRED! and NAUSEATED! and did-I-mention-I’m-creating-human-life-over-here?!
I
slept, I ate a lot of spaghetti, I took a reckless backpacking adventure on a deserted island, then I ate a lot of potato salad. For good measure. And then, because of it all, I
gained nearly 15% of my body weight in 21 weeks. I was, ahem, a bit of an overachiever on the early weight gain front.
Let me
be clear: I was and still am very
happy to be pregnant. But, simultaneously, for the first time in all the joy
and the surrealness and disbelief, I was also uncomfortable. My sudden it-appears-she-has-eaten-many-burritos
gut, while a nice reminder of my freshman year of college, was new and strange.
My relationship with food and exercise was upended and I began to envision my
future 85-lbs-heavier-never-sees-her-toes-again
self.
Meanwhile,
everyone wanted to talk to me about
pregnancy fitness. My downstairs neighbor, who just delivered twins, cornered
me on every occasion to EXTOL the virtues of pregnancy swimming. Buoyancy! Weightlessness! Wearing a bikini!
My fellow pre-natal-yoga attendees – most of whom were much further along than
I – provided carefree and almost blasé accounts of their practice of Bikram
until they were basically 39 weeks and pushing. A colleague of mine –
apparently limited in the benefits of self-awareness – yammered on about how amazing it was that she had three kids
and no stretch marks and it was all because of genetics some convoluted
pregnancy exercise regimen that I could never quite pin down. And then there
were the books and websites. For reasons that are beyond me – and likely have
to do with the endlessly entertaining image of a pregnant woman rolling a bowling ball that might aswell be under her shirt[3]
– every book and pregnancy website devoted an unusual amount of type to
assuring pregnant women everywhere that BOWLING
WHILE PREGNANT IS TOTALLY FINE. SERIOUSLY
WE SWEAR!
Falling
under “sports you may want more information about” (because, okay?) Your Pregnancy Week by Week offers the
following gem of wisdom: “Bowling is OK
(caps in original). As balance changes,
bowling could be more difficult for you.” I’m pretty sure that the
normally-sane-and-not-bananas Mayo Clinic
Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy even devotes space to this hot-button issue[4].
And I’m not even going down the rabbit hole of internet pregnant-whilebowling
tirades. See here,
here
and seriously, how could I not mention Yahoo Answers, HERE.
But
where was I?
Body.
Weight. Fitness. Right. Well, a funny thing happened at about 18 weeks: I
started to feel like myself again. Vegetables were appealing; I returned to
working out regularly; I no longer felt like I had been hit by a truck, I began
(mostly) sleeping through the night, etc.
And then,
after rapid early weight gain and not having made any dramatic changes – save
returning to how I ate, exercised and (more-or-less-plus-heartburn) felt pre-pregnancy – I completely by
accident went four weeks without gaining any weight and am now being admonished
to shovel whole eggs and cans of tuna down my gullet. Well then.
I
guess my point is this <brace yourselves we’re going deep>. The ebb and flow of pregnancy weight gain is not an exact science. Sure, if your body
is a body that follows the book of all things pregnancy, you should be gaining
about a pound a week at this point. But my body – and if I had to guess, most
bodies – don’t work that way. My own ebb and flow and trying to give my body
what it wants – which, in the first trimester was basically pad thai, potato
salad, and sour gummy peaches[5] – has also
been a reminder to trust that my body actually knows what it needs – something
of a Sisyphean struggle for anyone who has struggled to get pregnant.
But here
I am. Thinking creatively about how to incorporate 70 ever-loving grams of protein into my diet and contemplating whether or not
to take up bowling.
 |
| Snapped haphazardly as I was running out the door to work yesterday. (Professional photog in the making, obvs.) |
[1] Listen, I didn’t know there was such a
thing as “Kumbaya BabyTV” either. But now we’re both better off because of it. Is that a flying octopus?
[2] Like so.
[3] Because apparently someone would want to
buy this photo?
[4] I refuse to buy What to Expect When You’re Expecting because that particular breed
of fear-mongering is too much even for me.
[5] I’m not proud, but I am honest.
