Pregnancy and Vanity

As you probably gathered from my last post about my jeans, I'm over the moon excited that I'm fitting back into my old clothes again. I'm also very glad to not have any stretchmarks and to be see happy numbers smiling back at me from the scale. I always knew that I had some body image issues, but I'm surprised (and kind of disgusted) at how happy it makes me that I'm looking more like my old self again. I was so afraid that I would struggle to lose the pregnancy weight that I put on and so afraid that I would never look the same. I feel guilty in some ways for not embracing the idea of wearing my "battle scars" of pregnancy the way that some women are able to. I have never been more excited to get back into exercising and eating better.

I've never been one to fish for compliments and I don't take them very well at all, but I was in a wedding this past weekend and I really really enjoyed it when people told me they couldn't believe I had a 2 week old at home. Does that make me a bad person? I don't think it should, but for some reason I feel badly about it :(

Hit a Psychological Milestone

It's weight related, and I'm now consistently at a certain three digit number that ends in a zero. I'm surprisingly ok with it, even though it's 95 degrees here and my legs were ungodly swollen by the time I got home from teaching last night. It was the last class of the quarter, and that makes me happy.

Weighty Matters

I've posted various snippets of my thoughts and feelings about weight gain over the last 20 something weeks, but I've never dedicated an entire post to the subject. Anyway, today on the Nest there has been a lot of discussion about weight gain, who's gaining how much, whether people are gaining too much or not enough or who now weighs more than their husband, and on and on and on. I find it so sad that our society places such an emphasis on thinness and equates being rail thin with being beautiful. Women get a raw deal in the size/weight/eating area, if you ask me, throughout pregnancy and life in general. There was a fascinating article on MSNBC last week about how when women eat together it almost becomes a competition to see who can eat the least amount of food. It starts with one, saying that she's only going to have a salad, and then the others follow suit, even if they were really craving french fries or something equally frowned upon by the diet police.

Even though I think we need to give ourselves a break, especially during pregnancy, I'm just as guilty as the next woman when I get that sinking feeling while watching the numbers on the scale flicker. I'm currently about 3 pounds away from a number that I never would be glad to see, and there's a good chance I'll be hitting another milestone before the next 14 weeks come to an end. Just because you're expecting it to happen doesn't make it any easier when it does. Does this make me a hypocrite because I have a pint of ice cream a week but still fear my weight going over a certain number? Maybe, but I'd like to think not because I'm still well within my normal weight gain range and I'm careful to eat fruits, veggies, and other healthy things throughout the day so I don't have to feel guilty about the 1/4 cup of ice cream I enjoy. It's just sad that we've been socialized to fear the numbers on the scale.