Sunday, September 17, 2006

I would like to be the cute type of pregnant please, thank you.

Being pregnant after being on a diet for two years and losing 60 pounds is really hard. Incredibly hard. The getting fatter part that comes with being pregnant feels wrong, even though I know it's how it's supposed to go. I am eating as healthy as I can and I really haven't gained that much weight, but I am still getting bigger and there's a part of me that hates it, no matter how good the reason. Logically, I know I'm pregnant, and not fat, but it still feels like the past twenty four months are spooling past me in reverse, as I look down and see my stomach get rounder, as I have to shop for bigger bras. It feels so much like what getting fat felt like that it's hard to take sometimes.

I find myself making these ridiculous bargains, like "it will be ok if I don't get fat all over" or "as long as I'm that cute kind of pregnant with skinny arms and a saucy little bump like that lady I saw in Target, I won't mind it too much." But I can tell you I'm only 5'1" and I've seen pictures of my mom when she was pregnant with me and chances are even though I'm really a very healthy eater and I exercise there's only so much room on this little body and I'm probably gonna be pregnant pretty much all over, it's just probably how it's going to happen. I picture my stomach taking over and sort of being in charge of everything for about three months at the end there. The rationalizing and deal making is so stupid I don't even know why I do it, but I guess it just helps me to deal with the loss of control. Pregnancy is the ultimate loss of control, not just over your body, over everything. And I really really hate losing control.

The one thing that does make me feel better and that makes me feel actually sort of proud of myself is that I did lose sixty pounds before I got pregnant. Although at first I was mad at myself that I wasn't at my goal weight when I got pregnant. Because I am an idiot and a perfectionist I felt like a failure because I was 125 pounds and not 120 pounds, probably because I'd been fighting for those five pounds for over six months and I couldn't let them go. But I've been forced to let go of perfect in a big fat fast way, and so when I walked into the doctor's office for that first visit something just came over me. It occured to me, in the parking lot, actually, that maybe, no, maybe my abs weren't washboards, maybe I could have lost another five pounds, maybe I wasn't quite at perfect, maybe I could have done more lunges or whatever the hell. But I could have been walking in there having given up one of the absolutely hundreds times I wanted to over the past two years, I could have been walking into that doctor's office, pregnant, overweight, unhealthy, unhappy with my body and my life. And I wasn't.

I think maybe that moment in the parking lot was the moment that being healthy became more important to me than being perfect, and although it took me a really long time to get to that moment, I feel like I earned it. And ss I get more and more pregnant I am trying to remember that I should feel not fat, but proud. I did a damn good job, even if it wasn't perfect.

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