weight for it, 27 weeks, 5 days

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.

novice mistakes, 11 weeks, 6 days

First, thank you to all of you for your incredibly kind and thoughtful words and cheerleading on my last post. Celebrating this pregnancy – instead of, you know, persisting in a state of completely paralyzing anxiety – has at times been challenging. But if my laugh-crying is any indication, I’m getting there. Mostly though, just thank you. I know that many of you are still deep in the infertility struggle, so the kind words mean even more. And now, on to the funny!

----------

I’m no expert. In fact, the act of simply writing this – as if I even sort of know what I’m talking about – is bound to induce the M word or some other parade of horribles. But because I am completely unhinged calm, cool, and TOTALLY CONFIDENT, I press on.

So. Here is a totally non-exhaustive list of completely random things that I did do, and that you should not do, under any circumstances, during the first trimester of pregnancy. I hope you can learn from my novice mistakes:

1. Riding a ferry

Seriously, what are you, some kind of deranged masochist? We all know that non-drowsy children’s Dramamine is a joke. 

2. Interviewing for a new job

No matter that you’re wearing tightly-cinched-at-the-wrists long sleeves under your suit jacket in 85-degree weather and look like some iteration of a clinically insane prairie wife. One wrong move could reveal your wrist-bound SeaBands – literally the only thing standing between you and projectile vomiting. Sure, whatever, you know they can’t nix you for being pregnant – hello lawsuit – but you also know that would never be the stated reason.

3. Being present – or anywhere within smelling distance (which, when you’re in your first trimester, is, approximately, 18 miles) – when someone is eating marrow[1]

I don’t even know what to say about this one. Just writing it out so disgusts me that I can hardly continue. It may be true that prior to being pregnant, your partner has never, ever, eaten bone marrow. But the first trimester may, inexplicably, find you at a series of pretentious-hipster restaurants where bone marrow is somehow featured prominently on the menu as a kind of appalling “appetizer”. And your beloved partner, or one of your dear, dear friends, will say something convincing like, I mean, seriously, WHEN are we ever going to have THIS again? To which the only appropriate response swill inevitably be – NEVER! LET’S EAT IT RIGHT NOW! LET’S ORDER TWO!  <everyone breaks into frenzied and delirious excitement>. If you find yourself in this situation, I implore you. Intervene! Provide a reasoned analysis. Namely, there will be other times to eat adventurously. Like, you know, any time, whatsoever, when you are not pregnant. Like, literally, ANY FUCKING TIME THAT IS NOT RIGHT NOW. 

4. Fiendishly consuming an entire bag of sour gummy peaches under the auspices of a legitimate sour candy craving that must be sated IMMEDIATELY

Purely hypothetically speaking, you may find yourself, in an aisle of a northern California Walgreens, as your partner, in his most soothing, understanding, but secretly terrified voice, tries to bring you down off the ledge of mass corn syrup consumption. In an escalating series of let’s face it, pained exclamations “whispers” you will assure him that you know exactly what you are doing, despite his desperate entreaties to PLEASE EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION since, really, you haven’t had anything but oatmeal and pasta for days. No matter. You press on, defiant. Of course, as everyone knew it would, it all ends in four words: EXCRUCIATING HEARTBURN FOR DAYS.

---

[1] I know what you’re thinking. Marrow? You can’t be serious. It’s disgusting, it suggests I only dine in the lavish castles of medieval kings, etc. But here I am, subjecting you, loyal reader, to it’s very being. SO. Without further adieu, I invite you to replace marrow with “anything remotely adventurous that has a pungent odor and looks like the inside of your elbow.” There. That’s better.