Bodies, eating, etc.

I ate plenty of food (healthy! Tomato-carrot-red lentil-sausage-soup!) during the day yesterday, and I even made beef and green lentil stew for dinner. But I didn't eat that. All I could think of food-wise from about 4 on was a hot fudge sundae.

Just that. It was almost so stereotypical as to be stupid.

So I had one. So there.

My first pregnancy was a lesson in how cool my body can be. This one feels the reverse.

I am starting to really look pregnant, despite being at hovering around 14 weeks ish. My belly is not out past my breasts yet, but that is because my breasts are preparing to feed an army. (I think they are still miffed about last time, when they got to pump but then were cut off just when they were really getting started.) When I was at work last week one of my coworkers-in-the-know pointed out that I don't have /that/ much longer before making it official, which is true. My next week in Toronto for work is March 21, so I'll have to say then and decide when I'm going on mat leave (I think August 15 is probably a reasonable day; I don't think I'll work to the wire this time). Still this just pointed out how large I am; last time I think I was still in size 14 pants. Actually I am wearing size 14 pants, but they're low rise, and under my longish sweater, my belly is actually probably hanging over them.

(checks. Okay, not quite. But almost. There is a ridge.)

You see this time the growth is not a nice smooth pregnant belly. It's jiggly. This is because there is fat over it, and also because I never really got my abs back. And because of all the feeling like crap my legs have gotten jigglier and my ass is a disaster. I feel as fat as I ever did, and I'm still on restriction and I can't just hit the gym and workout. My mother pointed out that there is plenty of time to do this later, which is true (although I am not sure I should believe her given the state of her body) but it makes me want to panic. Part of it is vanity, and the other part is fear that I'll never manage to get back a body that works.

So I feel totally mismatched in my body in a way I haven't in a long time, and it's vaguely triggering. And then I wake up thinking fuck, why did I eat that hot fudge sundae? and it loops in my head - stupid, lazy, aiming for fat, fat, fat.

It may help when I can feel the baby move, because then it will be "oh, look at this person rolling about" and not "what the fuck is this lump." But I don't know.

I wonder if I would feel differently if Emily had lived, and I think the answer is yes if only because I would have spaced the pregnancy differently. Well. I didn't space this one. To be honest if I /had/ spaced this one deliberately it would have been after 10-15 more lbs off. So.

Despite all this hating the fat, I know I have to gain 25 lbs for a healthy pregnancy (last time I gained somewhere around 26). I know that this is the only chance I have to help this baby's bones, teeth, neural tubes (oops! those are done!), liver, kidneys, brain, heart, skin, etc., to grow. And in the immortal words of - someone - it actually is easier to do inside right now than it may be outside. So I know that all this pride and worry is in the end, futile: my butt will blow up and my legs will be such that people will run from them in the streets in the summer, but I will still eat my meals and pack it on.

But I may try not to eat sundaes more than once in a while.

In other news I have made a plan for Pride this year. Normally I do not believe that pregnant bellies should really be err, on display. But this summer I think I will make an exception and I will walk in the pride parade with a very short top and I will paint my belly with a big rainbow.

And then, if this child survives, and is raised quasi-Catholic, quasi-err -US, one day we can haul out the picture I will have taken of this occasion and use it the way my generation's parents waved their Woodstock paraphenalia around, see, I was young and cool once too.

And jiggly.

I'm not a very gracious pregnant person. People struggling with infertility, should they come here, will probably vomit and leave post-haste.

P.S. US, as a religion/ethical perspective, is our multiple system which includes everything from a very fae earthy gentle love granola type through pagans and christians to a not-especially-satanic cult queen or three. Oddly enough we manage to agree on courses of action most of the time.