**all photos on this post, with the exception of the first one, were professionally taken by Emily at Elkinks Photography.
It's hard for me to imagine that I am this close to the end of my pregnancy. It truly seems just like yesterday that I found out I was going to have a baby. I remember laying on my couch in October thinking, "How am I ever going to survive this until June"? Here we are!
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| 36 weeks |
On top of that, there are so many parallels to draw between a person's weight loss journey and their pregnancy journey. Both are physically demanding. Both are emotionally demanding. Both are unique to the individual. And both involve receiving a lot of opinions, whether you asked for them or not! And truth be told, I can say all these things and for some, this will not click until they go through their own journey. That's fine too! I am one of those people. I've read a LOT about weight loss, and I've been around enough pregnant women to know the basics of what goes on. But when you're not the one enduring the journey, it doesn't quite sink in the same way.
I can now say that I am thankful to God for giving me the ability to make a human. While I could not have seen myself voluntarily wanting to be pregnant ever in my life, I am so glad I've gone through this experience. I know it has made me a better person because of it. Pregnancy truly is a miracle - not only in the conception of the child, which is a miracle all on it's own, but also in how your body begins to respond to a growing human. The hormones that automatically turn on, the way your bones start to shift, the ability of your heart to start pumping more blood through your system. It all blows me away.
What blows me away even more is how my body has responded to pregnancy. I've talked about this before, but it's worth jotting down again for my own sake. I am most definitely not about to condone being overweight. However, I feel a lot like my blogger friend Ashley. {Ashley has her own weight loss journey that she talks about on her blog Coffee Cake and Cardio.} The thing that draws me to Ashley is something I believe we share (or, rather, shared prior to becoming pregnant). Ashley is very fit - she works out a ton each day, and also plays on a professional sports team in the area. Yet, she's talked about being ridiculed by doctors for being overweight. Ashley has very clearly proven that the number on the scale is, just in fact, a number.
By no means was I ever as fit as she is right now, but I can relate to this ridicule. Aside from my weight, I have excellent vitals. My blood pressure is always normal and tends to even be slightly on the lower side. My bloodwork is always as it should be (no high cholesterol, etc). Now, perhaps age is on my side. However, over the last 2.5 years, I've maintained a regularly active lifestyle. And going through this pregnancy, my body has amazed me that it has actually been able to do it's normal job, despite my being overweight. Sure, I have aches and pains, but I know what I experience is no different than what someone half my size is going through either. I said before, I definitely never wanted to have a baby being as overweight as I was. It didn't seem fair to my body, and certainly not to the child. Here I am, 3.5 weeks to go, and all appears as it should be! I am so grateful to God for this.
Having said that, I had another bad doctor's appointment today. I saw that same doctor today, that I saw this time around. I tried to go into this appointment mentally prepared for the weight discussion. And sure enough it happened. It was the first thing out of her mouth. So I asked her what the concern was with my weight gain (I had gained 7 lbs in 2 weeks). She rattled off a list of medical terms, throwing in "fetal death" and "hardships with recovery postpartum". These things are all risk factors with an overweight woman. Now, part of me wants to call b-s on this. I know that what she's saying is what could happen based on studies and evidence of previous pregnancies gone wrong. But that doesn't mean that just because I'm overweight it automatically means my child will die, or I will have a hard time healing postpartum, or all of the other medical jargon she threw at me. And I just got done saying how proud I was of my body for being so resilient. Yet, it doesn't lessen the sting when a medical professional tells you these things. The last thing I'd want to happen is for my child to die simply because I was overweight during their delivery.
The bottom line is, it hurts. I know she's just doing her job. But my being overweight has reared it's ugly head yet again. Despite that the baby has passed all of her little tests, and I have passed all of mine (gestational diabetes, other bloodwork, etc), I'm still not good enough. As I've said, I don't condone being overweight - as soon as she is born I cannot WAIT to return to eating normally again and getting back to exercise. I also know that part of this is my fault for being overweight, then getting pregnant. Still, the reality of it hurts.
The appointment today ended with orders to get a "rate of growth" ultrasound. If the baby is measuring too large at this point, I will be offered an elective c-section. How embarrassing, and how awful of a person am I that I might have to have a c-section simply because my child is too big before the 40 week mark... and too big because of me. How would I even make that kind of decision? She said they'd offer it to me, but I could also just continue on to see how things go. So, if I continue on to see how things go, and the baby goes into distress because now she's even bigger because I've waited and because I'm overweight, then what kind of person am I?
I pray nothing happens to her or to myself during these next few weeks that remain.
**all photos on this post, with the exception of the first one, were professionally taken by Emily at Elkinks Photography.
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3.5 weeks To Go! Updated at :
11:44 AM
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
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