It would probably wind up being a bad idea

To contact us Click HERE
I am a member of a due date club on Facebook.  Much as it sounds, this is a group of women who are all due around the same time (late-October to early-December, in this case).  We're getting into the biweekly/weekly appointments for most of us, which means stepping on a scale a lot.

Didja know that when you are pregnant, you gain weight?  True story.  You've got this little person inside you who is going to come out weighing, on average, seven pounds, and you have all the stuff that supports the growth and development of this little person, and your blood volume increases quite a bit and your hormones change so you can build up fat stores to nurse the baby once it comes.

Start out underweight?  You're gonna gain.  Start out overweight?  You're gonna gain, but your doctor might make you feel bad for it.

It's really annoying.  Weight is almost never a good indicator of health, and this is especially true during pregnancy.  There are a couple of gals in my DDC who have gained a lot more than I probably* have who exercise daily and keep close track of their eating.  Fuck thermodynamics, your body has its own agenda.

But a woman's weight is, in our society, a matter of deep concern for most of us.

And really...there is something deeply wrong in our society when how much a woman weighs so dictates her self worth that she cries over how much weight she has gained while pregnant.  But I've seen it a lot in my DDC and I am seeing more of it as we get farther along.  It's depressing.

Some time ago, this graphic showed up on a friend's board on Pinterest, and I saved it there & downloaded it (I don't have the original source; the link returned a 404 error):


And, well, I thought hard about posting it to the group's wall today...but the thing is, there's a good chance someone--probably more than one person, really--considers being a size 4 her greatest achievement in life, and that's just fucking depressing.



*I say 'probably' because I have no idea how much weight I've gained.  I never once stepped on a scale between the day that Marie was born and my first midwife appointment at 20 weeks pregnant.  So while I can tell you I've gone from 240 to 246 in the past 16 weeks, I haven't the first clue how much gain that represents over all, and I really don't care.