Weight Gain

I am going to be completely unoriginal here and have a freak out over pregnancy weight gain. This is how it all went down — I couldn’t go back to sleep after my third billionth potty break this morning, so I was trying to let my mind wander in hopes that my thoughts would calm and soothe me, thus helping me relax and go back to sleep. But my mind, the runaway train that it is, ended up calculating all those pounds I have gained in the last 24 weeks.

At first, it seemed like a benign exercise. You see, I thought I had been gaining one pound a week in the last couple of weeks, which, according to my doctor, is “a textbook case.” But then I realized that 149 minus 141 does not equal 5, oh no. In fact, any first grader will tell you that 149 minus 141 equals, HORROR, 8. Which means that I have gained more than a pound a week between my recent appointments (in my defense, they were 5 weeks apart).

Who can go back to sleep after that I do not know. I had to weigh myself right that second and, thankfully, I haven’t gained an ounce since Tuesday, which helped me calm down some, but obviously not enough to lull me back to sleep.

According to my doctor’s office, I have only gained 14 lb so far, which is totally not accurate, but I am going to go with that number because I am afraid I will not be able to sleep at all in the next 14 weeks if I don’t. I know it’s more than 14 lb, but I am making my mind deal with it, or else.

When I look at the media and all those beautiful celebrities churning out twins and not looking very pregnant, I get a little sad. I mean, Nicole Kidman in her ninth month just looked like she had a big lunch, at most. Almost all of them don’t gain anything in their faces and if you looked from the neck up, they still look quite emaciated. I, on the other hand, have put every ounce of my pregnancy weight into my cheeks. Every. Single. One.

I do realize that I have some wiggle room here and, if we are going with the 14lb weight gain, I still can gain up to 20 lb and be ok (based on the 25-35 lbs allowance which stems from my pre-preggers stats). Thing is, I don’t really want to gain another 20 lb. I don’t want to gain another 10 lb, to be honest. However, I don’t really have a choice.

My husband has been very sweet in all this weight hoo-la-la. He tells me, “If you can’t eat it now, when can you?” And that’s a great point, but I am not going to have a 35 lb baby, which means that some of those pounds will actually stay with me after he is born and the thought of having to deal with them later is not a pleasant one.