Ah, the lucky plight of a fat girl wanting to get pregnant. The joy of being told by many shitty men that you ‘need to lose weight first’ to have a healthy pregnancy. The constant doubts, as you try month after month to conceive, that it’s your fault. If only you weighed less, you would be pregnant by now. And once you’re pregnant? The joy ride isn’t over! At every appointment you are weighed and asked about your eating habits. The insinuation is clear – The success or failure of this pregnancy depends on the number on that scale.
Been there? Me too.
In fact, I had such a messed up pregnancy I plan on doing a few different blogs about it. But this post is about how fucked up diet culture ruined my pregnancy.
When I got pregnant I was the heaviest I had ever been. Sometimes when women talk about being the heaviest they’ve ever been they mean 165 instead of 140. I don’t mean that. I mean I was 295 lbs. I had always hovered happily around 250. 300 scared me. It felt like some precipice that I could never come back from. That 250 was “pleasantly plump” and 300 was “Too fat”. So it scared me a lot when I got pregnant at that weight.
I went into my pregnancy assuming that it would end horribly. After I peed on that first positive test, I peed on no less than 6 more over the following months. I kept thinking I was having a hysterical pregnancy. That I had a stomach tumor. That I had a horrible stomach bug making me ill. I told my husband on our way to our first ultrasound, that they weren’t going to find anything in there.
Meanwhile, between convincing myself I wasn’t pregnant at all, I was having severe Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG). If you haven’t heard of it, you’re very lucky. In layman’s terms it’s very bad Morning Sickness. In reality it means I LOST over 35 lbs throughout my pregnancy and was hospitalized with a torn esophagus from vomiting so much. I was assured that the baby was growing, and was literally told by one doctor “I know you’re worried he’s starving, but he’s OK, he’s eating you” – children really are a #blessing.
In my final trimester, when I finally believed I was pregnant and it looked like I was going to carry to term, I wouldn’t commit to plans for my family to come visit after the birth. I was certain I was going to require a c-section. Worse, I really believed that one or both of us (myself or my son) wouldn’t make it home from the Hospital.
Now. You may read all this and think – JEESH – It’s true. You can’t be fat and have a healthy pregnancy. But that’s not it. All of that turmoil was in my mind (or maybe, more accurately, in my heart). When I told my family GP I was pregnant he immediately referred me to an OB clinic that specializes in ‘High Risk Pregnancies’. I was High Risk because of my obesity. But when I met her she assured me that it was an AHS policy, and there was nothing high-risk about me or my pregnancy. Everything looked good. Even as the months passed and my “morning sickness” was officially diagnosed as HG, tests revealed that my HG was likely due to hyperthyroidism – my body was doing TOO GOOD of a job developing my baby.
Every test and ultrasound came back healthy. No diabetes. No heart problems. Good fetal growth. Healthy.*
* A note about this – if you had gestational diabetes, or you have any diabetes all the time; if you had a heart problem during pregnancy, or if you have a heart problem now; NONE OF THAT MATTERS. YOU ARE STILL A GOOD MOM AND IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT. All of those things happen to skinny moms. I promise. ALL OF THEM. Bringing them up in my story is more about my brainwashing than it is about the actual conditions.
So, here I was, having a relatively healthy pregnancy, and yet I was delirious with catastrophizing beliefs. What was going on? I’ll tell you. Internalized fatphobia and self-hatred. That’s what.
I grew up in a society, and with medical professionals, who had spent my entire life making me feel badly about the size of my body. That somehow my body was an agent of chaos, sent to sabotage every attempt at happiness. I also believed that I was a bad person, a moral failure, because I failed to control my body – to force it to be smaller – to make it take up less space, and therefore somehow make me more deserving of motherhood.
How fucked up is that? Like. Really? That internalized beliefs about what bodies are good, and what bodies are bad, totally robbed me of a joyful pregnancy?
How does that happen? How do I get to a place where I spend 9 months convincing myself that first “my son doesn’t exist”, and second “ok fine, he exists, but he won’t for long”? Because there is a generally accepted societal truth that if you are full figured, you don’t deserve a full life.
Throughout my life, I have had doctors tell me that I need to go on a liquid diet, that I need to go on intermittent fasting, and one even prescribed me diet pills that were later recalled because women were having heart attacks and dying. Now I look back at those doctors in disgust – putting an otherwise healthy 20 year old on what is essentially speed cannot really be the “do no harm” option? Those doctors didn’t care about my wellbeing. They didn’t like my body size. They were willing to risk my life to make my body smaller.
At the end of the day, my son was born healthy. I had a quick vaginal delivery (not natural, gimme all the drugs). We all went home as a family the following day. It was miraculous and terrifying. When they handed me my son, my first words weren’t words of happiness. They weren’t tears of joy. My first words were “what the fuck?”. I couldn’t believe he existed. That he was real and I had done it. I had spent 9 months gaslighting myself into believing I wouldn’t get to know him. And here he was.
That delivery was monumental for me. Like, truly groundbreaking. It was the first time I felt like my body took over and did something right. It was the first time that my body had really fucking triumphed at something it was supposed to do – something I never believe it capable of. It was like after that delivery I had a newfound relationship with my body. I realized I didn’t know her. I had never appreciated her. I had hated her without getting to know her. And so, I started this journey.
It started me wondering if my body was maybe not the enemy? And if my body wasn’t the enemy then who was? Questions I have spent the last 2 years beginning to unpack and try to answer.
The short answer is that the enemy is fatphobia rooted in racism, misogyny, and purity culture. So fuck all those things, am I right?
One more thing…
There are so many different, and worse, stories out there. I know so many amazing, strong, powerful women, who have been through so much adversity, heartbreak, and physical suffering, on their journey to motherhood. Women who have dealt with infertility and loss. Women who have lasting, long term physical ailments from their pregnancies and deliveries. All of that pain was added to by some asshole doctor who suggested it might not have happened if they had a smaller body. If you have one of these stories, I want you to know that you are amazing and literally nothing that happened to you and your family was your fault. You and your body went through that shit together, and you should be grateful for each other.
I love you. I see your heartbreak and I give you so many tight hugs. You did everything in your power to keep yourself and your family safe and you’re a superhero.
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