Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Weighty issues

Ok, I'm giggling at myself over the title of this post. :)

I've been stressing for the past four weeks about my pace of weight gain with this baby. Last month I gained just about 8 pounds, which is hardly the "2/3 to 1 pound a week" that is "recommended". Can I just say now that I really hate averages?? Because no matter that my brain knows that it is an average, I still think that I "ought" to be exactly on pace with it.

When I was pregnant with Jonathan, the same thing happened during my fifth month. Unfortunately, that happened to coincide with Thanksgiving and Christmas, and my doctor gave me rather a hard time about it. He wasn't mean, he just sort of made fun of me. Not so helpful when you hate the numbers on the scale anyway!

So this time around I kept telling myself "Emily, this has happened before, this is just how your body does 5th month pregnancy!" but at the same time I couldn't quite get that "doctor voice" out of my head telling me that I really need to lay off the buffet tables.

Anyway. Today my midwife came to the house for my appointment. She had asked me to keep two weeks of a diet chart - everything I put in my mouth - just so she could see and make sure everything was fine. So I did, faithfully recording everything - even the "bad" foods that I thought I shouldn't have eaten but did anyway. :)

The result? Sue says this is just the way my body works, and on top of that it is completely NORMAL. Further, she says that my diet is "great!" and that she doesn't care one bit how much weight I actually end up gaining, because I'm doing it all on good food.

Maybe I'll just put away my scale for awhile and work on believing her instead of stressing about the numbers.

2 comments:

Amber said...

Hey, that's me too! I'm glad that your midwife has such a healthy attitude about it (not that I'm surprised!) And good for you taking on and completing that food log - that's quite a commitment!

Dy said...

YES! I love your midwife. Put the scale away. Pregnancy is one beautiful time in your life where you really don't need the scales. Pay attention to how you're feeling, how your skin feels, how your ankles (or that area where they used to be, in my case) are doing... how's your breathing? Your water intake? Push for a back rub, or a foot rub, or another trip to the buffet. Enjoy the process! (Did I mention that I love your midwife?)

Dy