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Flat tummy. Is that you? Women are obsessed with it. But pregnancy simply takes it away. What’s more, you might even fret over whether or not you will have the flatness again.
Young women like to postpone pregnancy so they may enjoy being in their slim bodies for as long as possible. But think about women who end up being the same plus size no matter what they do. This plus size mommy I knew is just one of those who made up her mind on shedding weight. But no sooner did she start shedding the extra pounds than she got pregnant. Certainly not the time to eat less, burn the excess calories, and attain an hourglass figure! The vicious cycle began to the point that she could no longer care how she looked in her huge body.
Ever conscious about her huge size, she would draw comparisons of herself with other women, or with an image of herself she envisaged as ideal every time she looked into the mirror. The constant image-worrier that she was, she could barely cut down on junk foods and fizzy drinks. Then came a day when she thought she had reached the heights of her jeans tags – read size, not the price. It was here when she began a weight-loss regimen.
In a few months, she shed thirty pounds and was down by four jean sizes. Eating healthy also made her feel good about herself. She was only a few pounds down and had a long way to go still. But she also wanted to get pregnant. And months later, she did!
Then everything came a full circle.
Like every pregnancy hers too was a mish-mash of hormonal changes, mood swings, stress and worse – began to put on weight – something she had so deliberated to shed all the while. Fantastic!
In her first trimester, she was always hungry. She fell back on all the carbs that she had managed to curb for some time. Then there was more weight. What ensued was more panic. Was there a way she could keep wearing the same jeans? Would regaining the lost weight throw her back into the pre-weight watchers arena? The fear that her weight-loss regimen would go in vain kept hovering over her. She kept telling herself that she was not big. But there was seemingly a never-ending battle going on in her head.
In the meanwhile, she learned that she was going to have a daughter. As she began to think about her unborn child, thoughts about how she wanted raise her also began to shape up. On one of her brooding days, it simply occurred to her that she didn’t want to raise a girl who had a poor perception of her body and herself. She didn’t want to raise a girl who would take all the mental torture about her figure and looks (no matter how she was going to turn out to be). For her daughter to stay out of the self-hating attitude, she decided that she had to build her confidence first before her daughter would take after her. Here’s when she began to give her a self-assurance that she was looking great.
With these thoughts there was came a shift in her thought process. There was a change in perception of herself by now. If she had to raise a confident daughter, she would have to have confidence in herself, no matter what her body type was. This brought a smile on her as she said to herself in a long time, “Hey you look great after all!”
She certainly didn’t want to raise a girl who was going to turn out anorexic malnourished zombie.
Realizing that her baby would also begin to follow her lifestyle patterns, she decided to do everything in moderation. Curtailing most foods would be as good as excess control – which could lead to food and body issues in her daughter. Balance was the key and this woman had seven more months down her pregnancy journey to get that balance. While the four sizes down clothes began to pile up, she kept telling herself that the time to wear them would come again. But with the pregnancy progressing, she realized how her baby’s well-being took over just about every other thought of herself.
The love for her soon to be born child outgrew her obsession with how she looked or what her body type was. No longer was she going to be bothered about herself. Who cared after all! All the online literature and forums around pregnancy weight gain seemed worthless. Moreover, while being heavily pregnant she could not do anything about her shape. Her only aim now was to keep her baby healthy and have her arrive in time.
Her thoughts were soon dominated by what her body was capable of doing, that the health of her and her daughter was paramount and that she had to keep going no matter what her appearance was. Not that she had worked her way through not caring about herself anymore, she wasn’t entirely cured, but she sure had evolved in a more practical way. All for the sake of her baby.
